


before the morning comes

by tuntekorpp



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Mental Illness - mention, Non-Explicit Sex, POV Eliot Waugh, Recreational Drug Use, Russian Doll AU, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, happy ending because they deserve that shit, suicide - mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:35:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22417825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuntekorpp/pseuds/tuntekorpp
Summary: The streets around his place aren’t exactly full with traffic on the best of day, so he usually doesn’t pay much attention when crossing the street. It’s a quiet Sunday night, and literally no one is around, hence why he doesn’t even check before stepping down the sidewalk this time.Hence why he doesn’t see the car until it’s on top of him.He feels himself floating in the air, light, so light, but then he’s falling and—-He’s back in Margo’s bathroom.or Eliot is stuck in a time loop, reliving his 27th birthday party over and over again and dying in more and more creative ways, thinking he's alone in this, until he meets a certain someone.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 138
Kudos: 250





	1. Chapter 1

Someone once said that bathrooms during parties are liminal spaces. Suddenly you’re alone with yourself and the alcohol you drank and the weed you smoked and the coke you snorted and the pills you took and a weird kind of sobriety descends on you, just for a moment, just long enough for you to look at your face in the mirror while you wash your hands and think “what the fuck am I doing?” and you let the water run for too long after you rinsed the soap off your hands but somehow you just can’t stop looking at the red rimming your eyes and the wine stains on your lips, wondering what the fuck you’re doing here and what the fuck you’re gonna do for the rest of your life.

Until someone pounds on the door.

And the moment is gone. You shut the water off, you give your reflection one last look—yes, you’re really fucking high—and there’s another pound at the door, so you just give up on finding the meaning of life between your dark circles and your gaunt cheeks and you leave the bathroom before the woman behind the door goes all _The Shining_ on you.

Outside the bathroom, the loft is packed with people you more or less know—more less than more—but you try to enjoy it.

After all, it is your 27th birthday.

-

The living room is a mass of people chatting, swaying to some music that is almost inaudible over people’s voices and laughter, drinking and smoking. People say hi to him and he smiles, and compliments someone on their hair, their jacket, their new boyfriend. Someone offers him a joint and he takes it. Someone hugs him and they part with the promise of seeing each other more—he doesn’t know if he has actually spent time with that person outside of parties, but that might be the substances coursing his veins clouding his memories.

Eliot finally emerges from the sea of people and into the kitchen part of the loft.

“Happy birthday, baby,” Margo says from the other side of the kitchen island. He sits on one of the stools, because honestly, fuck staying up when you can sit. Margo holds out a joint to him. “Here, try this.”

Eliot waves with the hand currently holding on his joint. “I’m already set, Bambi.”

“Nope, you’re not. This is a new blend. Try it.”

Eliot takes her joint and hands her his.

“You like the party? You having fun?” she asks as he takes a deep puff of the joint.

He raises an eyebrow. “Fun is for posers, Bambi,” he says, holding the smoke in before exhaling. “Two minutes ago I turned 27. Staring at the barrel of my own mortality beats fun any day.”

Margo rolls her eyes and tosses her hair over her shoulder. “Don’t be morbid, you fucking drama queen. I planned this party for you and I even baked you a cake.” She gestures to the chocolate cake sitting on her left.

Eliot bows down to her. “Thank you,” he says sarcastically.

“You’re fucking welcome, dickhead.”

An arm wraps around his torso from behind and he’s being hugged against a very feminine chest.

“Happy birthday, Eliot!” Fen shouts two inches from his ear before planting a kiss on his cheek. “Do you enjoy the party?” she asks, releasing him and going to the fridge.

“Eh, I guess,” he shrugs. “Hey, you’re a good person to ask this, how do you deal with midlife crisis?”

She turns to him, a beer in her hand. “Why? Do you think I have a midlife crisis because I’ve been dating around since my divorce?” she asks, slamming the fridge shut then opening her beer bottle with more strength than necessary.

Margo snorts. “Dating around?” she repeats disbelievingly, bringing the joint to her lips.

Fen raises her hands in surrender, rolling her eyes so hard her whole head goes with it. “Fine! Fucking my way through New York!” She takes a generous sip of her beer and slams down the bottle on the counter afterwards. “Why are you asking this, Eliot? Isn’t it a little early for a midlife crisis?”

Margo nods. “Exactly. You’re not even 30, so shut the fuck up and eat some cake.”

Eliot sighs, and slumps on the counter. “I don’t know,” he says. “I smoke a lot.”

“You drink a lot,” Margo adds.

“You do drugs a lot,” Fen finishes.

He straightens up, smokes more of his ‘special blend’ joint. “See? I probably have the lungs of a 70 years old charcoal miner. If I make it to 50, I’ll be shocked. I mean I am 27, now. Twenty. Seven. That’s not a good number for people like me.”

Margo rounds the island and plants herself next to him, leaning back on the counter and staring firmly at him.

“El, honey. No matter how much drugs you ingest, you’re not a rock star. The curse of 27 doesn’t apply to you.”

“I know,” Eliot whines, but he’d firmly denying ever whining if anyone pointed that out.

“What’s going on,” Margo asks flatly, but Eliot sees right through her. She can try sounding as detached and uninterested and long suffering as much as she wants, she’s still someone who cares and she can’t hide that, not to Eliot.

“Javier left.”

“Your boyfriend?” Fen cries out. “Oh, no!”

Eliot physically recoils. “Boyfriend? Ugh, no, please don’t insult me.”

Margo lights a cigarette and crosses her arms, unimpressed. Like this, it’s easy to picture her at 60, distinguished and beautiful, with a low and hoarse voice and no time for anyone’s bullshit. So exactly like now, but with white hair.

“Your boy toy is gone. So fucking what?”

“He left, Margo. He left me. I’m not the one who’s being left, I’m the one who leaves!”

Margo snorts. The bitch. “Who cares, you’ll find someone new tonight and your poor fragile ego will be fine.”

“She’s right. There’ll probably be an orgy or two tonight, anyway,” Fen adds—and wow, divorcing Bayler really changed her for the better.

And he knows they’re right. One asshole leaving shouldn’t matter. People leave all the time. They’re not made to stay caged in, stuck at the same place forever. It’s not like he was expecting a future between him and Javier, so, as Margo would say, who the fuck cares?

He claps his hands. “Alright, ladies, let’s go enjoy this fucking birthday party, we have some choices to make.”

“Such as?” Margo asks lazily.

He stands up, grabs her by the waist and pulls her against him. “Such as who’s gonna suck my dick tonight, and who’s gonna have the honor of eating you out, darling.”

Margo throws her head back and laughs and Eliot grins. “I’m already set, baby,” she says, “but please, do help poor Fen over there, so she can stop dick-hopping across the city.”

“Hey!” Fen shouts. “It’s not always dicks, thank you very much!”

Eliot makes cocktails, and then they’re dancing and Fen disappears for a while and when she comes back her hair is a mess but she’s smiling and asking for another cocktail so he makes her one while Margo shoves cake at everyone passing by her, then they’re dancing some more and he lights another joint and then there’s another tongue in his mouth and the tongue is attached to a very cute blond guy who does wonderful things with his hands and suddenly they’re outside and making out against a wall and the guy is saying something about going to Eliot’s place and Eliot can only think _yes please let’s go._

His mind clears a bit as they’re walking away from Margo’s loft. Blond Guy is talking about… something, and Eliot definitely didn’t get the start of the sentence, but he hums and nods anyway because he isn’t that rude. Well, he _is_ , but not when he wants to have sex with the person yapping in his ear.

“We should get supplies,” he says when they reach the bodega at the corner of his street, cutting Blond Guy in his monologue. He doesn’t wait for an answer and gets inside the shop. The brightness of it makes him squint a little but he also feels more sober somehow. He grabs a couple of cans of Red Bulls because he knows his morning is going to be rough, a pack of condoms, some lube. Maybe he has some at his place, but he doesn’t want to take the risk.

Blond Guy is waiting for him at the counter, checking the trashy magazines on display there.

“Need something?” Eliot asks.

Blond Guy looks at the items in Eliot’s hands. “Looks like you have everything. Now we just need the guy,” he says, making a jerky movement toward the empty register, just as the door opens with a jingle of the bell above it.

A petite woman enters, a guy with long hair slumped over her, clearly drunk and struggling to walk.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m here,” she says when she spots Eliot and Blond Guy. “Q, wait for me in the back, alright? I’ll be right there.”

Long Hair—Q? Who the fuck is called Q?—mumbles something while nodding vaguely. He makes a couple of steps on his own before catching himself on a shelf, nearly making a couple of tomato sauce jars fall down. The noise makes the only other customer raises her head from the boxes of tea on the shelf in front of her. Who the fuck buys tea in a bodega in the middle of the night?

“Sorry about that,” the tiny woman says with a slightly embarrassed smile as she slides behind the register.

“Is he gonna be alright?” Eliot asks her.

“Yeah. Just, rough night, you know.”

“I get that.”

He can sense that Blond Guy is getting impatient next to him, but it’s not like Eliot actually cares about the guy beyond fucking him.

“I never saw you there,” he tells the woman while she rings his stuff.

“Oh yeah, that’s normal. I’m covering for Penny. Food poisoning. I’m Julia.”

He slaps a few bills on the counter. “Eliot. I hope he’ll recover soon.”

“Thanks, I hope so too. Here’s your bag.”

Eliot takes the plastic bag just as a crashing sound erupts from the back.

“Good luck with that,” Eliot says. “I’ll see you around, Julia.” Blond Guy is already out the door.

She closes the bodega behind them.

-

Sex with Blond Guy is alright. Not world shattering by any means, but nice. It passes the time. Brings an end to the night in a satisfactory way. Afterwards, Eliot sits on his couch and lights a cigarette. He’s relieved when he hears Blond Guy getting dressed. There’s nothing more annoying than a hookup overstaying their welcome.

Blond Guy sits in the armchair opposite the couch to put his shoes back.

“So,” he starts. “Can I get your number?”

Eliot snorts. “Please. This was fun, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that it was anything more than a distraction.”

“Oh. You’re one of those ‘I don’t cuddle and I don’t do relationships’ guys?”

“Exactly,” Eliot says, letting out a plume of smoke. “I’m only gonna settle when I’m, like, 60, so I don’t have to die alone. Assuming I don’t die between then and now, which is dubious at best. Does that answer your question?”

“Sure.” Blond Guy shrugs. “We could still fuck again, though. Like. You could come and sit on my face right now.”

“As tempting as it sounds, I actually just got you an Uber,” Eliot replies, waving with his phone in his hand.

Blond Guy sighs. “Alright. Bye, then.”

Eliot waits until he hears the front door closing before slumping down on his couch. 3am, his phone says.

“Ugh.”

He opens a can of Red Bull. No point in going to bed now since he has to wake up in four hours. He finishes his cigarette and drains the can. He texts Margo to know how the party ended but she doesn’t answer, so he tries Fen, but she doesn’t answer either. He grabs his pack of cigarettes, only to find it empty.

“Fuck.”

He throws on some jeans and his coat and leaves the apartment. Outside, the wind has picked up. Eliot hugs himself to try and keep warm. He glances in the direction of the bodega but the lights are off. With a sigh, he turns to the other direction and starts walking to the other—much further away—bodega.

The streets around his place aren’t exactly full with traffic on the best of day, so he usually doesn’t pay much attention when crossing the street. It’s a quiet Sunday night, and literally no one is around, hence why he doesn’t even check before stepping down the sidewalk this time.

Hence why he doesn’t see the car until it’s on top of him.

He feels himself floating in the air, light, so light, but then he’s falling and—

-

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom.


	2. Chapter 2

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom.

The water is running down his hands and he’s staring at his face in the mirror, and his eyes are red and he’s probably high, but he’s also fairly sure he just fucking died. But then he didn’t. Or maybe this is his afterlife. Margo’s party, for his 27th birthday. Could be worse, as far as afterlives go.

Someone’s pounding on the door. Eliot shuts the water off.

He opens the door and it’s the same girl as that first time behind it.

He goes through the mass of people crowding the living room, and it’s the same people, the same music. The same guy offers him a joint but this time he doesn’t take it. He’s being hugged and he hears that they should get together more often and Eliot vaguely nods but his mind is focused on one thing. Getting to Margo.

“Happy birthday, baby,” she says from the exact same spot in the kitchen and she holds up the joint just like before. “Here, try this. It’s a new blend.”

Eliot takes the joint and just stares at it.

“You having fun?”

“Bambi,” he says, and he sounds a little shell-shocked—which is pretty normal when you just died but not.

Margo frowns. “You’re not having fun.”

“What was I just doing?” he asks her.

She raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean? You were in the bathroom. I don’t know what or who you were doing in the bathroom.”

“No, but like—” Eliot starts with absolutely no idea about how to finish this sentence, so he takes a puff from the joint. “Don’t you think it’s weird?” he says after breathing out the thick smoke.

“What?”

“I don’t know, life?”

Margo gives him a flat look, deeply unimpressed. “What’s going on?”

Eliot stares. What did he say the first time she asked that?

“Javier...left,” he says slowly.

“Your boy toy? So fucking what?”

Eliot doesn’t say anything. Everything is happening like before—except Fen, who only just joins them, if the arm around him and the boobs against his back are any indication.

“Happy birthday, Eliot!”

Then, just like before, she kisses his cheek, releases him and goes to the fridge to fetch a beer.

“El? You okay?” Margo asks.

“Uh-uh,” he says, nodding rapidly and trying not to freak out, but he can still feel the freaking out coming so he decides his best course of action is to go somewhere where he can be alone.

“What’s wrong with Eliot?” he hears Fen asks Margo.

“Fuck if I know,” is the reply.

-

He finds shelter in the guest bedroom, which is surprisingly empty of people fucking each other. Eliot sits on the bed, lights a cigarette.

He must have taken some bad shit and it gave him a vision. A bad trip. An extremely vivid, full technicolor, complete with texture, smell and taste bad trip. And of course, he knows Margo and Fen so well that the versions of them he conjured in his head had acted exactly how the real Margo and Fen would act in the same situation.

Yep.

Reasonable explanation.

He looks up at the fish tank Margo keeps in that room. Two fat goldfishes are swimming lazily around the giant cube.

Eliot frowns.

He has stayed many times in this room. He has stared at this fish tank, high and clean, drunk and sober. There was always more fish than that.

He goes back to the main room, where Margo finds him immediately.

“Are you having a bad trip, right now?” she says, staring at him hard in the eyes.

He looks at her, searches her face for anything that could explain what the fuck is going on.

“Didn’t you use to have more fish?” he asks instead of answering her because frankly, he doesn’t know if he’s having a bad trip or not. Evidence points to yes.

“What? No, I have two. Ember and Umber. Why? Are they dead?”

“No,” he says, “they’re alive. They’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

Margo grabs him by the shoulders. “You definitely sound high right now. Let’s get you some water.”

“Those damn stairs almost killed me,” comes a deep voice on their right before any of them start moving toward the kitchen.

Eliot turns towards the newcomer, who is none other than his former foster dad. “Hey, Henry,” he says, a bit taken aback. It’s a reflex to greet him really. He doesn’t remember Henry being there the first time. But he was also extremely high that first time.

Henry complains more about the stairs and Margo laughs.

Even if Eliot wasn’t shell-shocked, he could hardly tell him that maybe if he stopped smoking those fucking tree trunks passing for cigars he wouldn’t be hacking up his lungs after three flights of stairs. After all, Eliot is also hacking up his lungs every time he goes to Margo’s, and he definitely has no plans to stop smoking. Which is why his apartment is on the ground floor. Also because stairs are hard when you’re drunk.

So Eliot keeps staring at him, trying to remember if Henry is featuring in his hazy memories of his first experience of the party.

“Happy birthday, kid. Thank you for the invitation, Margo. And no, I’m not late, it’s only—” Henry checks his pocket watch. “Eleven. Ish. What did I miss?”

Eliot opens his mouth but no words come out as Blond Guy walks by behind Henry. And Eliot is absolutely positive that he had never seen that guy before that first time living this party.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” is what he says. Henry looks at him sternly, just like he used to when Eliot was a teenager and Henry was going to give him some life advice. “I was gonna fuck that guy,” Eliot says, pointing at Blond Guy with his cigarette. “But right now, I just feel profoundly empty and everything is pointless.”

Henry’s eyebrows climb up to where his hairline would be if he wasn’t bald as a pebble. He exchanges a glance with Margo who makes her ‘I have no fucking idea what’s wrong with Eliot this time’ face. “Why don’t we talk? Hm?”

They find a corner of the living room quiet enough to be able to talk without shouting. Eliot pours Henry a whiskey and makes cocktails for Margo and himself.

“I’m having the most intense déjà-vu,” he says as he mixes the alcohol. “I mean. Was having. But it’s like I’ve done this before, this night, this party.”

“This conversation?” Henry asks, settling down on the couch.

“No.” Eliot hands her glass to Margo who sits directly on the rug. He sits next to Henry and sinks into the cushion. “This—this is new. You weren’t here the first time. Or maybe you were but I think by now I was already making out if this blond guy on the stairs. Or I was just extremely high. I don’t know, some part of the night are really blurry.”

Margo and Henry look at each other, frowning, and Eliot can see they’re worried. It’s okay, he’d be worried too. He _is_ worried too.

“This was always gonna be a tough birthday,” Henry starts cautiously.

Eliot grimaces. “Henry, you’re wise and all, but not everything is about my mother.”

Henry takes a sip of his whiskey. “She would have been proud that you’ve made it to 27, though.”

“You mean that I’ve finally gotten older than she ever was?” Eliot shrugs. “Yeah, maybe.”

Margo drains her glass. “Alright this is getting depressing, dance with me, El.”

She stands up and holds out a hand, leaving him no choice in the matter.

They dance and everything seems to be fine until someone decides to turn on the flashing lights, and suddenly, Eliot is back in the street, stepping down the sidewalk and head lights are coming towards him quickly, too quickly for him to avoid them and—

“El? What’s going on?”

Eliot steps away from Margo.

“I think I’m gonna puke.”

He rushes to the bathroom and throws open the door.

“Hey!” a feminine voice says, but Eliot barely gives her a second thought.

“Eliot?” comes another voice, Fen. “You alright?” she asks, untangling herself from the girl she was making out with two seconds ago.

“I’m gonna puke.”

He breathes deeply and steps further into the bathroom.

“Did you drink too much?” Fen asks.

“No. Not more than usual.”

“Smoked too much?” she continues, ignoring the other girl leaving the bathroom with a frustrated sigh.

“No. I feel fine except that feeling that I just got hit by a car.” Eliot closes down the toilet seat and sits on it. “I don’t remember the last time I ate but otherwise I remember everything. I remember things that haven’t happened, Fen. Like I’ve already lived them. This party. It already happened for me and I’m just living it again.”

Fen nods, looking lost and confused, but also concerned and vaguely scared.

Eliot exhales, pushing a lock of hair away from his eyes. “I think I’m dead, and this is my afterlife.”

“O-kaaaay. Maybe you need to like. Drink some water and then go to sleep. I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning.”

Eliot slouches, his head hanging low on his chest. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Sorry I clit-blocked you.”

Fen shrugs. “It’s okay, we’re neighbors. I can sleep with her pretty much whenever.”

“Oh. Cool for you, then.”

“Hey, are you okay?” says someone near the entrance of the bathroom, and fuck, Eliot knows that voice and it wasn’t there the first time.

“Idri!” Fen greets with a fake happy voice. “We’re fine, it’s fine, El is just a bit tired, but I got this, thank you, bye.”

“No, it’s okay, Fen,” Eliot interrupts. “I’m okay.” And he doesn’t know why he does it. He should tell Idri to fuck off and he should stay with Fen, because friends are more important than exes, but clearly he’s not thinking straight—ha! When is he ever?

Fen looks at him long and hard, like she’s trying to figure out something and the answer is hidden on his face.

“Fine,” she says, clearly displeased. “But if you’re not done in ten minutes, I’m coming back and I’m dragging your ass to bed, El.”

Eliot snorts. “Fen, please. In ten minutes you’ll be making out with someone and you’ll have forgotten all about me.”

Fen makes a face, then shrugs. “Fair,” she agrees, and leaves.

Eliot, still on the toilet seat, looks up at Idri, who is so out of place it’s not even funny. Okay, it’s a little bit funny.

“Hi,” Idri says in a vaguely hopeful tone that makes Eliot think that he made a mistake in ever allowing to be alone with him.

“Hi,” he replies, curtly, then turns around and pukes.

-

“Soooo...Let me see if I have this right,” Idri says once Eliot is done puking and has explained what happened—is happening? They’re sitting in a quiet-ish corner of the apartment and the look of concern on Idri’s face doesn’t comfort Eliot. He’d prefer it if Idri would just straight up call him a crazy asshole who needs to lay off the drugs. “You think that you were hit by a car on your way to go buy cigarettes after this party. And you died. But now you’re reliving the party?”

Eliot lights a cigarette. “I don’t think. I’m telling you, it happened,” he says as he exhales a cloud of smoke.

“Okay,” Idri drawls. “Let’s say you were hit by a car—”

“Not hypothetical,” Eliot cuts, because honestly fuck it. “Just a fact. That happened.”

Idri frowns. “Okay but somebody who just got struck by a car would have, I don’t know, a mark, a bruise, something, but you—you look great. I mean, you always look great, but tonight you’re—”

Eliot rolls his eyes. “Alright, thank you, but that’s not what we’re talking about right now. I’m grateful for the compliment but this is not what this is about.”

“I mean, it doesn’t look like it affected you, this thing, whatever happened,” Idri says slowly, like he’s explaining something to a particularly slow child, and it doesn’t feel like they’re talking about the Déjà-Party at all.

Eliot stares. “So now you’re just using this to talk about our relationship,” he says flatly.

Idri sighs. There’s something in his eyes, like he’s disappointed, or tired, or both, but Eliot has too much going on already to really give a fuck about it.

“My point is,” Idri says with the tone of someone who’s giving up on a fight, “that right now, you look like you’re fine.”

Eliot swirls his whiskey, and the ice cube makes crystal like noises when it hits the glass. He lets the silence between them stretch some more. Idri fidgets with his drink, throwing him furtive glances. Eliot drains his glass.

“Alright,” he says, the whiskey still burning at the back of his throat. “How are you?”

On a scale of one to invading Russia in winter, how much of a bad idea is it to ask this question to the ex you dumped after his wife discovered his affair with you?

Idri clears his throat. “Well. My divorce is literally eating at my soul at this point, and the last six months of my life have been a waterfall of failure and misery.”

“Wow, you’re fun at parties,” Eliot says. His attempt at dedramatizing the situation with irony lands short though. Idri gives him a look that clearly says ‘I hold you responsible for half of this.’ “Sorry,” Eliot tries. He doesn’t sound sorry at all.

“I miss you, Eliot. Very much,” Idri says, so sincere and earnest and open that it’s painful to hear.

Eliot pulls deeply on his cigarette. “Don’t try to guilt me for your mistakes,” he says before releasing the smoke.

“Don’t try to pretend you’re innocent,” Idri replies immediately, the pleading in his voice disappearing and replaced by something like outrage.

“You’re the one who decided to cheat on your wife.”

“You never tried to stop me.”

Eliot rolls his eyes. “Why the hell should it have been my responsibility? I was 25 and you’re 15 years older than me. You’re a grown man, Idri, act like it.” He snuffs the rest of his cigarette in his empty glass and stands up. He’s done with this bullshit. “Why the fuck are you even here anyway?”

“Margo texted me. Because apparently you couldn’t be bothered to invite me yourself,” Idri answers as he gets to his feet.

“Oh my god, are you mad because I didn’t invite you to my fucking birthday party? Why would I anyway?” Eliot asks sarcastically. “You know who throws a tantrum because they haven’t been invited to a birthday party? Five years old kids, Idri. Grow the fuck up.”

Eliot strides across the loft and finds Margo in the hallway.

“Why did you invite Idri?”

“I didn’t invite him.”

“He said you texted him.”

Margo shrugs. “Yeah, I did. I mentioned that we were having a party for your birthday but I didn’t actually invite him. I didn’t think he’d have the balls.”

Eliot clenches his hands in frustration in front of him, trying really hard not to reach out and actually strangle his best friend. “Why would you do that?!”

Margo rolls her eyes. “I thought that maybe if he showed up, you could clear out the table and then fuck on it. Might relax you. You look tense, El.”

Eliot makes a frustrated noise. “Yes! I am tense, Margo! You know what? Because my best friend invited my fucking ex to my birthday party and I think I died and/or am hallucinating right now! So you know what? I’m outta here!”

Margo’s mocking smile disappears from her face, leaving behind a mask of ice. “Do not leave this party, Eliot. I did this for you,” she says in a glacial tone.

“Well thank you very much,” Eliot replies as sarcastically as he can. “But I’m leaving, because I am losing my fucking mind!”

Without waiting for Margo to insult or yell at him or both, he turns away and walks resolutely toward the front door, grabbing his coat on the rack.

“Go fuck yourself, Eliot!” Margo yells at his back.

He gives her the finger without turning back and is out the door the next second.

He ignores Blond Guy talking on the phones at the top of the stairs, ignores Fen calling his name behind him and all but run down to the street.

Outside the wind is cold and sharp and he inhales deeply.

So.

That just happened.

He already feels like shit for getting into a fight with Margo, but he’s too full of alcohol and misplaced pride to go back up and apologize. He’ll do that in the morning, once they’re both sober and not surrounded by people, including his fucking ex.

He walks without a destination in mind, not ready to face the loneliness of his apartment. If he’s more careful when he crosses the street than usual, well, there’s no one to judge him for it.

He ends up down on the river banks, leaning against the fence, watching the Brooklyn lights reflect into the water and cars passing by on the Manhattan bridge. He lights a cigarette. At the corner of his eyes, he spots a woman walking her dog, bundled in her coat against the cold. He looks back at the bridge.

“Fuck,” he mutters. He turned 27 a couple hours ago and it’s already going to shit.

He closes his eyes and inhales, feeling the smoke filling up his mouth, his throat, his lungs, his nose. No way is he making it to 50 at this rate. He hears the woman passing behind him, unhurried footsteps and dog huffs, then silence. He finishes his cigarette. 

There’s a metallic crack under him.

And another.

And then there’s no more fence supporting his weight and he’s falling head first into the dark and icy waters of the East River.

-

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom.


	3. Chapter 3

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom and he’s throwing up water. River water, to be precise, if the taste and smell are anything to go by.

“Fuck!” he shouts, before bending over and throwing up in the sink some more.

There’s a pound at the door. Just like the last time.

Just like the last two times.

Eliot pants, heart beating erratically like it just got shot up with adrenaline.

He turns off the faucet—when did he open it?—and leaves the bathroom. It’s still the same girl behind the door. He stares at her as he walks past her. She gives him the stink eye and slams the door behind her.

He crosses over the loft, and he doesn’t greet anyone, he doesn’t hug anyone and he still doesn’t take the joint off the person offering it.

Margo is behind the kitchen island, just like before, holding a joint, smiling as soon as she sees him. Well at least now they’re not fighting anymore. Pros of reliving the same evening, Eliot guesses.

“Happy birthday, baby,” she says and she starts holding the joint out to him.

“The universe is trying to fuck with me, and I refuse to engage,” Eliot declares to no one in particular. “Do you hear me? Fuck you, universe!” he shouts toward the ceiling.

Margo rounds the counter.

“Eliot, what the fuck, are you high? You’re acting a liiiittle—”

Eliot grabs the joint from her hand. “What’s in this?”

“It’s a new blend. A special blend.”

Eliot shakes his head, staring hard at Margo. “Nope. Nope, that’s not it. I’ve done weed more times than I can count and I’ve tried all type there is, but nothing has ever fucked me up like this did.”

Margo snorts. “Yeah, right, you haven’t even smoked it yet.”

Eliot puts his hands on her shoulders and wills his voice to sound as serious as it can. “Bambi. If this joint is made with anything other than weed, I really need you to just tell me.”

Margo shrugs his hands away, and Eliot can tell with the angle of her brow that she’s really not amused. “Come on, El. Don’t be such a fucking drama queen.”

“I am not being a drama queen, Bambi. That thing is fucking me up. I think I’m dying.”

Margo huffs a laugh. “Come on. You’re a cockroach,” she says lightly, inhaling from the joint.

Eliot’s eyebrows go up. “What?! What the fuck, Margo? Why the fuck would you call me a fucking cockroach?!”

She rolls her eyes, hard, blowing out the smoke. “Because you can eat anything, drink anything, do anything, it’s impossible to destroy you! You’ll never die!”

Eliot can’t help the hysterical laughter bubbling up his throat and exploding. He knows he sounds and is acting like he completely lost his marbles right now, but honestly, there’s not a lot of other ways to react. “I! Am dying! Constantly!” he shouts.

Margo crosses her arms. “You know what? If you’re going to act like this, then maybe you should just leave, alright?”

“Fine!” he yells, and yeah okay, people are staring but fuck them, he’s having a fucking crisis over here so Fuck. Them. Hard.

He bumps into Blond Guy at the top of the stairs and they would have both fall down the stairs if Blond Guy hadn’t grabbed him and pulled him back.

“Thanks,” Eliot mumbles, shaking Blond Guy’s hands off of him.

“Be careful!” Blond Guy replies.

Eliot steps away. “Fuck you.”

-

Outside, the wind is still cold and sharp and Eliot inhales and stares at the sky.

“Be careful,” he mutters to himself and starts walking home.

-

He’s surprised to wake up sprawled on top of his bed. Light is pouring from his window.

Maybe he’s okay. Maybe it was just a very very very bad trip and now it’s over and he can just move on with his life.

He calls Margo.

“It’s the Cockroach!” he says when she picks up. He moves from his bed and goes to the kitchen.

“Hey, El. Are you still off your rocker?”

“Eh, debatable,” he replies as he starts his coffee machine.

“I’m sorry about last night,” Margo says after a beat. “You were clearly having a bad trip.”

“Yeah, well, I’m fine now, don’t worry about it. Listen, what I really need to know is where did you get that joint from?”

He hears Margo sigh on the other side. “Hoberman.”

“Uh. I thought he bought a bar.”

“He did. But you know him.”

“That I do.”

He lights up a cigarette.

“Are you gonna tell me what’s going on?”

There’s a clean-ish mug next to the sink. Eliot inspects it, deems it acceptable enough, and pours his coffee in it. “Well, I would...but I think explaining it would give us both an aneurysm.”

“Uh-uh,” Margo says, clearly not convinced.

“I gotta go, Bambi. Thanks for the info. We’ll talk later.”

-

The bodega is open. Julia is behind the register, reading a book.

“Hey, Julia,” Eliot greets. “Penny’s still sick, then?”

She frowns. “Do we know each other?” she asks. “How do you know Penny’s sick?”

“Uh, yeah? I came here last night? You told me?”

Her frown deepens. “No, you didn’t and I didn’t.”

“Pretty sure I did and you did. You even came in with your friend with the floppy long hair, and he was drunk?”

“What? No, I was alone all evening and I certainly didn’t have a friend here with me, what the fuck are you talking about?”

He can see she’s getting pretty freaked out by him. And he gets it. It’s all blurry in his mind. He went home with Blond Guy and they swung by the bodega and he got hit by a car, but he also left the party alone and ended up in the East River, but he also slept at his place and didn’t die and is now here. And her name _is_ Julia and Penny _is_ sick so how can he know that if his memories of going to the bodega with Blond Guy aren’t real?

“Listen, if this is a prank Marina or Kady told you to play on me, fine, you got me, ha ha, very funny. Now do you need anything?” Julia asks without any patience.

Eliot buys two packs of cigarettes on autopilot and leaves.

-

He calls Hoberman and ends up on his voicemail.

“Hey, Josh, it’s Eliot. Waugh. Listen, I really need you to call me back, it’s important. Thanks.”

He heads up to Hoberman’s bar anyway. Better luck of finding him there than at the squat where he lives according to Eliot’s last info on the guy.

A dog comes up to him halfway there and starts sniffing at his pants.

“Hi, there,” Eliot says, squatting down to pet him. “Are you lost?”

“Sorry!” a voice calls a bit farther up the sidewalk. A middle aged woman is jogging in his direction, her red coat flapping behind her. “Sorry, his leash just slipped my hands,” she says in a very English accent once she’s at his level.

“No problem,” he assures her, giving a last pet to the dog as she’s taking the leash back. “Have a good day.” She smiles up at him, thanks him again.

-

Eliot sends the same text to Fen and Idri next.

_Have you smoked any of Margo’s special blend joints last night?_

Maybe he’s not the only one freaking out, even though it feels like he is. Maybe they’re all fucked from the joints and it’s nothing and he’s definitely not losing his fucking mind like his mother before him and, nope, not going there, let’s not.

He isn’t even sure Idri was there in the end.

He puts a cigarette between his lips and pretends his hand doesn’t shake when he brings the lighter to light it.

-

Hoberman’s bar is open when Eliot arrives. He pushes the door open and, just as he predicted, Josh is there, sitting at the counter with a laptop and a joint.

“Eliot! My man!” he exclaims when he sees Eliot. “How are you, dude?”

“Hey. I’ve been better.”

The few windows in the walls don’t let that much light through, giving the entire bar a dim, almost dark atmosphere. Eliot’s shoes make sticky noises as he walks to the counter and the entire place smells heavily of weed.

“Cool place,” he says anyway as he sits on one of the barstools.

“I know, right! It even got a secret backroom!” Josh leans towards Eliot. “Wanna know the password?” he asks in a low voice. “ _Enter The Void_ ,” he continues without giving Eliot a chance to say no.

“Of course it is,” Eliot says. “So listen, those joints you sold to Margo—”

“The special blend joints?” Josh cuts, smiling from ear to ear. “Yeah, I rolled them myself, they’re killers, right? Did you like?”

“Is there anything else in them?”

“Other than weed?”

“Yeah. Something that could be like. Inducing visions or hallucinations?” Eliot asks, hoping Josh will give him a straight answer. Not an easy feat.

“A psychedelic drug? Other than weed? Nah.”

“Are you still using your regular supplier?”

Eliot is getting to the end of his rope and he just wants One. Damn. Answer. He’s not sure if he’s alive, or in his afterlife, or still hallucinating, or maybe he’s in Hell, who the fuck knows?

“Nope, a new guy!” Josh answers brightly.

“Who?”

Josh pauses. He observes Eliot, focused like he rarely is. “What’s this about, dude?”

Eliot sighs and tries his best not to let his frustration overcomes him. Hoberman can be very susceptible sometimes.

“Okay, alright. Josh. Who loves drugs more than me?”

Josh huffs a laugh. “More than you? No one.”

“And who loves orgies more than you?”

“More than me? Absolutely fucking no one.”

“Exactly. And yet, here I am,” Eliot says and alright maybe he has a hard time articulating what he wants to say right now. He’s not even sure what he wants to say. “Listen. I tried almost every drug that exists, yeah? And I can’t think of anything—anything, Josh—that would fuck me up and cause the kind of total meltdown I’m currently having.”

“You look fine to me,” Josh replies, lighting a new joint.

“I’m not,” Eliot says dryly, pushing away the intense need to strangle Hoberman right here and there. “So I need to know. Because if it’s not the drugs, then it’s me, and I don’t need that shit in my life right now.”

Josh examines him, looking like he’s calculating something in his mind, and Eliot wants to yell at him to fucking talk already, but his phone vibrates in his pocket. He takes it out.

It’s Idri.

Eliot sighs. “I gotta take this, hold on.”

He picks up and goes back to the street.

“Yeah?”

“Is that how you answer the phone now?”

“I’m in the middle of a thing. What’s up?”

“You texted me.”

Eliot closes his eyes and exhales. “Right. Okay. Yeah, did anything weird happen to you last night?”

He hears a snort on the other side. “Yes, Eliot. I went to your birthday party and you weren’t here.”

“Fuck,” he groans. So Idri did come to the party and Eliot does have memories of fighting with him at his birthday party but apparently that didn’t happen. Great. Fucking great. “So, listen, I think Margo gave me some weird shit last night, and I wanted to know if someone else was reacting badly to it and I don’t know how to tell her, or you for that matter, or anyone who fucking cares, that I’m experiencing something absolutely fucking terrifying right now, that I’m truly scared, that I’m questioning my sanity and that I may be dead. And in Hell.” He’s breathing harshly and his hand is shaking again and Idri isn’t saying anything. “Hello?” he asks after a few seconds of utter silence. “You there?”

“Yeah,” Idri finally replies. “I’m just trying to figure out where I fit in all of this.”

“Uh, I don’t know, maybe, like, help me?”

“I blew up my life for you and you left me quicker than you left that party. Why would I do that?”

Eliot clenches his jaw. Inhales deeply. Starts pacing up and down the street. “Alright, you know what, Idri, do me a fucking favor, yeah?” he all but hisses through his teeth. “Start fucking other people, okay? It’s been six months!”

“Hey! I fuck a lot of people!”

“Oh yeah?” Eliot shouts into his phone. “I’ll believe it when I see it!”

What he doesn’t see is the open basement hatch in front of him until he’s falling head first into it.

-

He's back in Margo’s bathroom.

“Fuck,” he groans.

He shuts the water off and heads towards the door, just as the girl starts pounding on it. Still the same girl.

He goes directly to Margo, grabbing his coat off the coat rack on his way.

“Happy birthday, baby—”

He takes the joint off her lips, kisses her cheek and goes to the stairs, barely hearing her calling after him.

He runs down the stairs, doesn’t slow down when he reaches the street, going to Hoberman’s bar instead.

It’s packed at this hour, smoke obscuring people’s faces, but Eliot spots the entrance of the secret backroom.

“Enter the void,” he says to the guy standing next to a closed curtain.

The guy nods and lets him pass.

The corridor behind the curtain is dimly lit. It opens on a room that looks like any other industrial basement in the city, and Eliot walks across it, reaching another corridor, that leads him to a room with blue fluorescent tubes lighting it and Hoberman and two other guys sitting in front of a table littered with weed, pills, kitchen scales and plastic bags.

“Eliot, my man!” Hoberman exclaims. “Long time no see. Happy birthd—”

“What is in this?” Eliot asks, holding out Margo’s joint.

“Special blend?” Hoberman nods to the guy next to him. “Talk to Bacchus, he’s my new guy.”

Eliot turns to the guy. “What kind of weed is it?”

“It’s not just weed,” the guy—Bacchus—says like he’s offended Eliot would even suggest he does something as mundane as normal, only weed, joints.

Hoberman turns to him. “Wait. It’s not?”

“Nah, there’s ketamine in it too, dude! It’s really great for people with depression, or cancer! People with cancer fucking love ketamine!”

“Ketamine,” Eliot repeats, trying to focus on the important information and not on how he wants to punch Bacchus in his stoner frat boy face.

“Yeah!” Bacchus says. “It’s really helping people, I swear. Smoke it, dude, you’ll see! A whole new world!”

“Wow,” Hoberman says, like he’s genuinely impressed.

Eliot rolls his eyes, feels what little is left of his patience wearing extremely thin. “Fucking great for those people, especially the ones with cancer, but I don’t have cancer, and now I keep dying and reliving the same fucking night!”

“Does it hurt?” Bacchus asks.

“You seem fine,” Hoberman says.

“Yes, it hurts, and no, I’m not fine, Hoberman, this is the fourth fucking time it’s fucking happening!”

Bacchus and Hoberman exchange a glance.

“Is there a history of mental illness in your family?” Bacchus asks.

Eliot pauses and stares. “That’s not it—”

“I only ask because it can—”

“No no no no no, that’s not me, alright? It cannot be me, understand? So, since it’s not me, it must be your shitty fucking ketamine!” Eliot shouts. “Alright?! Thank you and fuck you, I am not sorry for yelling, I’m having a very-hard, never-ending night!”

He leaves Hoberman and fucking Bacchus—who even nickname themselves Bacchus? How much of a fucking asshole fuckboy do you have to be, uh?—and steps out onto the street through the back door.

He sighs.

He has learned exactly jack shit and he’s still fucked. He puts a cigarette between his lips.

The main door opens on his right.

“Alright, okay, one feet after the other, Q, yeah, okay that’s it.”

He knows that voice. He glances at them and sure enough, it’s Julia, with her drunk long haired friend half slumped on her. They start hobbling in direction of the main street and away from Eliot.

“That’s the guy I was talking about,” Eliot mumbles around his unlit cigarette. He starts jogging toward them. “Julia? Julia! That’s your friend!” he calls.

He still doesn’t see the fucking basement hatch that’s still fucking open and don’t people know it’s fucking dangerous to leave those things open without a sign or something?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all get two chapters today 'cause this one's short.  
> yes most of the dialogues and scenes have been taken directly from russian doll but honestly it is so fucking good, i couldn't not do it.

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom and his neck hurts like a motherfucker. Falling headfirst in a basement would do that to someone.

“Fuck. Fuck! Close that fucking hatch! Jesus fucking Christ!”

He leaves the bathroom before the girl starts pounding on the door.

“Happy birthday, baby!” Margo calls from the kitchen.

“Do NOT offer me that!” Eliot almost shouts, pointing at the joint in her hand.

“El, what the fuck?”

“There’s fucking shitty ketamine in there, Bambi!”

Margo stares at him for a few seconds without moving. Then she joins him and takes his arm.

“What are you talking about?”

“Hoberman and Bacchus told me.”

Margo looks at him like he just told her her dead great grandma had a message from the Other Side for her.

“How do you know about me and Hoberman?” she asks, looking vaguely anxious. “Who’s Bacchus? You haven’t even tried this?”

“You and Hoberman?” Eliot repeats, blinking until he has what he would genuinely call a light bulb moment. He wishes he hadn’t though, the revelation sort of weirds him out. “Oh my god, are you sleeping with Hoberman? Is that why you said you were all set when I said we had to find someone to eat you out?!”

Margo blinks. “What the fuck is going on with you?”

Eliot steps away from her. “I’m out of here.” He walks backward until he hits to coat rack and grabs his coat. “This is a real fuck this, okay?”

He starts going down the stairs but someone bumps into him and he falls down the rest.

-

“FUCK!” he yells in Margo’s bathroom.

“Happy birthday—” she says when she sees him.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he asks desperately.

Margo looks at him like he’s grown two heads.

He tries going down the stairs again.

Breaks his neck again.

-

“Happy birth—”

“Is this some kind of sick fucking prank?”

Margo stares. “What?”

Eliot feels like he has a light bulb moment. “This is like The Game,” he says, suddenly very calm. “I’m Michael fucking Douglas.”

He leaves Margo to think on that.

And breaks his fucking neck in the fucking stairs, for the third fucking time.

-

“Happ—”

“I don’t have time for this,” he cuts her off immediately. “I need to figure out how to get down the stairs.”

Fourth time.

-

“Happy birthday—”

“Why? Why would you give me a joint if you don’t even know what’s in it?”

Margo snorts. “It’s a special blend, relax.”

“It’s not a special blend, Bambi, it’s laced with fucking ketamine! And I’ve never done ketamine before and it turns out that it fucks me up!”

Margo looks at him like he’s grown a second head. Again. “We’ve done ketamine,” she states with a shrug. “Todd’s party. You were fine.”

Eliot deflates. All the tension, all the anxiety, all the fear goes away. Instead, a profound helplessness takes their place.

“I forgot,” he says softly. And he can’t believe he has forgotten. Of course he has done ketamine before. Nothing like that ever happened to him on ketamine. He’s fine on ketamine. “Fuck.”

“Okay,” Margo says with a long-suffering sigh. “Relax. I did all of this, this party, including the surprise special joint, for you, because I lo—”

“Because you think I’m a cockroach,” he finishes.

“What,” Margo says flatly.

“I’m not a cockroach. You’re the cockroach.”

Margo frowns, and if he’s being honest with himself, he can see that she’s getting pissed off. It’s in the line of her shoulders, the way she crosses her arms, the tension she holds in her jaw. He doesn’t give a fuck. Not anymore.

“Why are you calling me a cockroach?” she asks.

“Because you called me a cockroach.”

“When? I’d never call you a cockroach.”

Eliot feels like he’s going to cry. He’s living a nightmare and his best friend hates him.

“Bambi. I need you to help me,” he pleads. “And right now, you’re not helping me. You’re sabotaging me.”

Margo gives him a look so filled with judgment he feels like she just stabbed him in the lungs. “Will you stop acting crazy?” she asks in an icy tone.

Eliot flips. “Fucking hell, I am not crazy, alright? I AM NOT,” he shouts. People around them stop talking, stop dancing. “You know I hate it when people call me crazy,” he says at a lower volume, his voice breaking at the end.

Margo inhales from the joint, utterly unimpressed by his behavior. “Maybe don’t act crazy, then,” she says without mercy.

Eliot waits a couple of seconds. Margo doesn’t add anything. The silence stretches between them. He turns around, toward the kitchen island where the cake she spent the day baking is.

“What are you doing?” she asks when he approaches the cake.

He stares at her, and without breaking eye contact, takes the cake and raises it over his head.

“Hey—” Margo starts, but Eliot throws the cake on the ground. The plate smashes in million pieces and the cake splatters over the hardwood floors.

If eyes could kill, he’d be dead from Margo’s.

He leaves the loft and unsurprisingly breaks his neck in the stairs for the fifth time.


	5. Chapter 5

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom. Again.

He turns off the water, opens the door before the same girl starts pounding on it.

Margo greets him like she always does and he takes the joint. Fen hugs and kisses him and she takes a beer from the fridge. They ask him if he’s okay and he says Javier left and Fen says “oh no” and Margo says “who fucking cares” and he loves them so fucking much.

People greets him and hugs him and gives him drinks and he makes cocktails and he smokes more joints and at some points he sees Henry and they don’t talk about his mom and he sees Blond Guy but he doesn’t want to fuck him.

He catches a glance of Idri but he’s drunk and high off his face he can’t even talk to him and he keeps drinking and smoking and at some point he’s snorting cocaine and then he’s dancing with Fen and she asks if he wants to fuck her and he says “thank you very much, but no” and she laughs and she says she loves him anyway.

There’s tequila shots and something with vodka, and more cocktails and another joint.

He talks with people and he has no idea what he’s saying and he can’t feel his face, he finishes his pack of cigarettes and someone gives him a new one and he says “nice jacket”. Idri tries to talk to him and he ignores him, grabs a bottle and he doesn’t know what it is but he drinks it anyway.

He ends up in the guest bedroom, watching the two fishes swimming around their tank.

-

He’s surprised to wake up on the bed of the guest bedroom. His head is killing him and a rat and an ashtray fucked and died in his mouth, but he’s alive.

He sits up.

There’s a pile of people in various states of undress on the other side of the room. Fen is among them.

Eliot finds a bottle cap next to him. He throws it at her. “Fen? Fen. Fen,” he calls, throwing another cap and an empty cigarette pack at her. She opens her eyes. “Wake up. Are you up?”

“Yeah,” she says sleepily.

“C’mon, wake up.”

She sits up, her tank top askew and revealing half her boobs. She looks around her and at the other almost naked people right next to her. “Oh shit. Nice job, me.”

“Hey, will you help me out with something?”

She frowns, then unfrowns, then rubs at her face, looks at him, shrugs. “Yeah sure, why not.”

-

“Explain to me again why we’re doing this and not, you know, taking the stairs?” Fen asks as they’re climbing down the fire escape. She’s in front of him, examining the steps and landings before giving him the all clear.

“It’s a long story involving multiple deaths,” he says as he climbs down after her.

She unlocks the final ladder and goes down. He follows suit, a bit wobbly on his feet.

“Yeah, this is much safer,” she mumbles into her can of Red Bull.

“Hey, I’m not crazy,” he says when he’s on the ground.

Fen raises her hands. “I’m not judging. I love crazy. Today I’m making twelve inches long knives for a guy who wants to become a knife thrower. The key is to know who’s the right person to ask for help. In his case, me. In your case, also me.”

“Thanks, Fen.” He hugs her. “Sorry for not fucking you last night.”

“Eh, it’s fine, I know you’re not that much into girls.”

Eliot shrugs. “It’s like thai food, you know. I like it, but I don’t want to eat it all that often.”

She smiles. “Well, next time you wanna eat thai food, let me know,” she says with a wink. She kisses him on the lips and gives him her Red Bull can. “You’ll need it more than me.”

She starts climbing up the ladder.

“You’re going back to the fuck pile?” Eliot asks.

“Eh, maybe? We’ll see.”

His phone vibrates. A text from Idri. “Fuck that all the way.” He locks his phone. “Bye, Fen,” he calls up.

“Bye! Love you!”

He walks down the street and it’s the same street where there was that dog who got loose and came up to him, but this time, he passes by the woman in her red coat and she doesn’t have a dog, nor does she look like she’s running after her dog. She doesn’t look at him, passing him by just like any other stranger.

Eliot watches her walking by him. He keeps looking in the direction she left long after she turned the corner and he can’t see her anymore.

There’s something deeply wrong with him.

Maybe Henry was right during that conversation that may or may not have happened.

Eliot changes direction abandoning Alphabet City to get to the Upper West Side, where Henry lives.

The walk across Manhattan does nothing to clear his mind, instead tangling his different experiences of the evening together. How many times has he done it? He breathes deeply, starts counting, mumbling to himself.

“First time was the car,” he mutters, holding out his left thumb. “Second was...drowning.” He unfolds his index finger. “Then the hatch. Twice.” The next two fingers join the others. “And then the fucking stairs. Five fucking times.”

He stares at his hands. He just died nine fucking times. In a row. This is his tenth time living the party.

He gets to Henry’s brownstone. Maybe he should have called, or texted, he thinks as he’s knocking at the door. He shrugs it off mentally. Henry will be there or he won’t and Eliot will live with it either way. Probably.

The door opens.

“Eliot! I’m surprised to see you up this early,” Henry says as a greeting. “You were particularly shit-faced last night.” He moves to the side so Eliot can come inside, and closes the door behind him. “How are you?” he asks, herding Eliot towards the kitchen.

“Eh. Weird.” Eliot shrugs.

“Would you like some tea?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

Henry raises an eyebrow. “Scotch, then?”

Eliot snorts. “It’s not even noon, Henry.”

“Never stopped you before. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” Henry asks, settling at the kitchen table.

Eliot does the same. “Can’t a man just visit his foster dad after his fateful 27th birthday?” Henry tilts his head, clearly unimpressed by Eliot’s antics. “Fine! I wanted to talk to you.”

“Alright,” Henry says, steepling his fingers in front of him and relaxing into the back of his chair. “What’s going on, Eliot?”

“I think—” Eliot starts, acutely aware of the weight of Henry’s gaze on him. His own eyes shift around the room before he continues. “I think it’s gonna get pretty heavy,” he warns.

Henry leans forward. “I’m listening.”

“I think I’m losing my mind and I’m going crazy,” Eliot says quickly, like ripping off a band-aid.

Henry sighs. “You know I don’t like that word, Eliot.”

“I know. But. I need to know. What was her diagnosis? Mom, I mean. What was wrong with her?”

Henry clears his throat. “Your mother wasn’t only one thing. She wasn’t just her illness.”

“I know that, but do you think it could be genetic? Because I’m positive that I’m currently losing it,” Eliot says, his voice louder and shakier than before. Oh yeah, he is freaking the fuck out, right now.

“What is going on?” Henry asks in a serious tone. His eyebrows are drawn together and Eliot can see the tension in the corner of his mouth. His foster father is definitely worried for him.

Eliot takes a deep breath. “Last night,” he says slowly. “I died.”

Henry blinks. Once. Twice. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I died!” Eliot repeats and he can’t stay sitting in that chair, so he stands up and starts pacing around the kitchen. “Nine times! Nine. Times. But I keep coming back and reliving the party and everything is the same except it’s not! And I thought it was the drugs but nope, so I figure it must be me, right?”

Eliot stops his pacing and stares at Henry expectantly.

“You died,” Henry says slowly. “Not just once, but nine times. And yet, here you are.”

“Here I am.”

Henry stays silent and Eliot is desperate for him to say something, anything.

“You were a difficult teenager,” is what Henry says. “And you were often somber and gloomy, remember that?” Eliot nods weakly, already knowing where this is going. “And one day, I told you, that if things got really difficult, there was always a place for you upstate, away from the city and the noise.” Henry stands up and takes Eliot by the shoulders. “Do you want to go stay up there for a bit? Away from the city? Clear your mind?”

“Yeah,” Eliot says quietly, almost a whisper. “Yeah, I think I need it.”

“Do you want to leave now, or do you want to pack a bag?”

“Let’s leave now.”

They take Henry’s car. The traffic isn’t awful for once, and they’re soon past Harlem and the Bronx and the island. It’s a beautiful sunny day outside. Eliot leans against the passenger door and watches the landscape pass by the window. Which means he’s in the front seat when an eight wheeler arrives on their right with no sign of slowing down.


	6. Chapter 6

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom feeling like something really hard collided really fast with his entire body. Which. Is what just happened.

“Alright. Let’s fuck this party in the mouth.”

It’s apparently the only way for him to survive until the morning, so he gets just as drunk and high as the last time, and if he kisses people he shouldn’t, then who cares? He’ll die in a couple of hours and it’ll be as if nothing happened!

“There you are!” Margo’s voice comes behind him. He turns around and hugs her, and if he spills some whiskey on the floor, well, it’ll be fine at the next reset.

“I love you!” he shouts at her over the music.

“Are you having fun?”

“Are you kidding? Greatest party ever!”

Margo looks so pleased by his words, he promises himself that if he ever exits this nightmare, he’ll compliment her more, make her feel just how much he loves and appreciates her.

“Thank you!” she says, happy and drunk. “Thank God I started cooking on Thursday!”

Eliot barks a laugh. “Thursday! What a concept!”

“What do you mean?” Margo laughs, stealing his glass from him.

“Bambi! It’s never gonna be Thursday again! It’ll always forever be this party and we’ll just keep coming back!”

Margo smiles and laughs and she looks confused but happy anyway, so he just kisses her sound on the mouth.

“I love you!” he repeats again and saunters away, bobbing his head to the music.

He drinks and smokes way too much, again, and wakes up on the guestroom bed. When he looks around, the fuck pile is here, Fen in the middle of it.

Eliot stretches and his back pops satisfyingly. As he does so, a coat falls off of him. Eliot pauses. That’s Idri’s coat. What. The fuck.

This will have to wait, he has a mystery to fucking solve.

“Alright,” he yawns. “Let’s do this.”

He goes to the kitchen, forces himself to drink a tall glass of water, then rotates his neck until it pops. He leans against the counter with a groan. The hungover is coming. He was already getting too old for this shit before dying multiple times in traumatic ways.

He moves around the loft, trying not to wake the various people sleeping in every corner of it, dressed or undressed. He gets to the bathroom door and pauses. He never considered the occult and supernatural to be real, but something that isn’t drugs is happening to him, so at the moment he’s open to any possibilities. And right now, what he’s contemplating is whether the bathroom is haunted or not. It’s where he starts every single one of his death loops, so it makes sense that there’s something wrong with the place, right? And let’s face it, this loft used to be part of a factory that’s been here since the 19th century, surely people died in accidents and shit, right?

He opens the bathroom door and steps in.

“Hey!” the guy peeing yells. Eliot ignores him, examining the room instead.

“Did anything weird happen to you in this bathroom?” he asks. “You know, like—”

“This,” the guy interrupts. “This is weird.”

“So, no voices, no cold spot?”

The guy looks at him up and down. “No,” he ends up saying, judgment dripping from his voice.

“Right,” Eliot says and leaves.

He considers taking the stairs for all of four seconds.

“Fuck this,” he declares to no one in particular and goes back inside the loft.

He climbs down the fire escape on his own this time, and heads over to a coffee shop, getting something for him, but also for Margo and Fen.

Climbing the fire escape up with a cardboard tray precariously holding three coffee cups and a paper bag full of pastries is somewhat of a challenge, but he makes it back into the apartment just as people start waking up and leaving.

Margo is sitting on a couch, painting her toenails, and Fen is sprawled next to her, wearing an open silk robe over her tank top and underwear.

“Hello, my darlings,” he says from the windowsill.

Fen jumps a little. “Eliot!”

“What the fuck are you doing on the window?” Margo asks after taking in his position. She doesn't stop painting her nails.

He finishes climbing over the windowsill, straightens up as gracefully as he can and presents them with their coffee.

“I went to get you breakfast. You’re welcome.”

Fen takes her and sighs happily when the steam hits her.

Margo sets aside her nail polish and takes the cup he’s holding out to her. “Thanks. Why the fire escape tho?”

Eliot sits between them. “I don’t trust your stairs,” he says idly before taking a sip of his latte.

Margo snorts. “O-kaaay,” she mumbles into her cup.

They enjoy their coffee in a silence broken only by the distant sound of people sleepily moving around the loft.

“Hey so, what do you know about this building?” Eliot finally asks.

Margo glances at him between two bites of Danish. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what kind of factory was it? Did something terrible happen? I don’t know, old building stuff, you know.”

She takes another bite of her Danish without breaking eye contact and chews lazily. She sucks on her teeth after she swallows and Eliot wants to shake her like a coconut tree.

“This isn’t the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, you know,” she drawls.

“Okay, but did something happen here? Aren’t real estate people obligated to disclose that kind of stuff?”

“Are you saying the building’s haunted?” Fen pipes up. She’s been too busy destroying a cinnamon roll to participate in the conversation before that.

Margo snorts. “Oh please, like that shit’s real.” She turns to him. “If something weird happened to you here, it’s because you were on drugs, honey,” she says, patting his cheek for good measure.

His phone vibrates where he left it on the coffee table. Margo grabs it for him.

“Idri wants his coat back,” she smirks.

Eliot rolls his eyes. “This fucking guy. He put his coat on me while I was sleeping. Who the fuck does that?” Margo and Fen shares a glance, and both of them grin. “Oh, don’t give me that shit,” Eliot sneers, “It’s been six fucking months, he needs to move the fuck on.”

Fen shrugs. “It’s sweet.”

“So is cyanide.”

“Is it, tho?” Fen says, wrinkling her nose in that adorable way of hers.

Margo shrugs. “Listen,” she says. “If you wanna know if that building has been the theater of some tragedy or what the fuck ever and you wanna convince yourself that it’s haunted, just go to the fucking library.”

Eliot melts against the cushion and groans.

He’s being ridiculous, he knows that, but the entire situation is ridiculous, and apparently he’s the only one stuck in it. He’s allowed to be ridiculous. He takes a deep breath, pats the cushions on either side of him and stands up.

“Alright, I’m out of here, I need to have an existential crisis.”

-

He makes it to his apartment without getting hit by a car, breaking his neck in the fire escape, or falling down a hatch. He even pushes his luck and gets into the shower.

Once clean, and, to his utmost surprise, still alive, he calls Idri.

“Eliot,” Idri says as he picks up.

“Hi.”

“It was good to see you last night.”

Of course, Eliot has zero memories of hanging out with Idri the night before. “Yeah, yeah, same. So. I actually need your help.”

“My help?” Idri repeats, and he sounds suspicious. Which is probably fair, given their history. “With what?”

“It’s gonna sound bonkers, but do you know anything about Margo’s building?” There’s a silence on the other side. “Idri?”

“...What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re in real estate, right? I’m sure when y’all aren’t busy selling historical landmarks to Russian billionaires in need of a room for their fucking pet parrot you’re talking about building gossip and shit, right? So my question is, are people talking about Margo’s building?”

“Like how?”

Eliot closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, trying his best to remain calm despite the fact that his ex is a dense motherfucker.

“Is the building haunted?” he asks, articulating each word slowly and distinctly.

“Are you messing with me? I don’t have time for your games, Eliot,” Idri replies, sounding disappointed.

“It’s not a game! I am fucking serious right now, okay?” Eliot yells into his phone.

Idri doesn’t answer right away. “Are you having a mental breakdown?” is what he says after a beat. “Did you kill someone?”

“Holy fuck, you really think you’d be the person I’d call if I had killed someone?” Eliot snorts. “Please.”

“What is wrong with you, Eliot? I see you last night and you’re all happy that I’m here and now you act like the very idea of my existence offends you.”

Eliot rolls his eyes and lights up a cigarette. He sprawls on his bed, and wonders why the fuck he’s on the phone with Idri.

“First of all, I was drunk last night,” he says, inhaling and releasing smoke without moving the cigarette from his lips. “And high.” He takes the cigarette between his fingers. “And I’m not anymore, so what I say right this second has more truth to it than whatever shit I said last night.”

“I blew up my life for you,” Idri starts slowly. Here we go, Eliot thinks. A good old guilt trip. “And that’s on me, but you act like it’s not a big deal. Well, it is a big deal and if you could acknowledge that happened, that’d be the minimum of decency. But you can’t do that, can you? Because you’re a self centered egotistical narcissistic asshole who sucks out the life of the people around him like a goddamn black hole,” Idri finishes, fully angry by the end of his little monologue.

“Are you done?” Eliot asks coldly.

“No. You’re going to bring my coat to my office, and after that, we’re done.”

“Fine.”

Eliot hangs up.

“Well. That went great,” he says to his smoke stained ceiling. “I’m a life-sucking black hole.”

-

The rest of the day passes by in a haze of smoking and looking up ‘haunted buildings alphabet city’ on the internet. He learns absolutely nothing.

The evening arrives and he almost doesn’t believe it. He has never made it to the next evening until now.

He decides to test his luck by doing what he’d normally be doing that night, ie. go to a bar. He doesn’t go to Hoberman’s because the memory of the hatch is still too fresh in his mind, instead meeting with Fen at a dive halfway between his apartment and the townhouse she’s sharing with a dozen of other people.

They talk and laugh and drink, and it feels like he’s okay, like whatever the fuck that was is finally over and he can enjoy his night with one of his best friends without fearing to choke on the olive in his drink.

He walks her all the way back to her place and says goodbye with a kiss on her cheek.

It’s a bit of a walk to get back to his apartment, but the night is beautiful, even if freezing cold. The sky is clear and, although this is New York City and the light pollution is their specialty, he thinks he can discern a few stars between the buildings.

He stops in the deserted park not too far from his apartment and sits on the bench with his head thrown back, looking at the sky and appreciating the icy wind whipping at his face. He’s drunk again, but he feels good, if a little sleepy.

He closes his eyes, just for a second, just to rest a bit before going back home.

-

He's back in Margo’s bathroom, feeling cold all over, all the way to his bones.

“I froze to death?” he says to his reflection in a shaky voice. “Jesus fuck, that’s dark.”

He leaves the bathroom and goes directly to Margo.

“Happy birthday—”

“I’m sorry, I can’t stay,” he tells her, and the ice in his bones is still there and all he wants is a boiling hot bath and his bed.

“El, what the fuck?”

“I think I’m dying, right now, for real, and I gotta go.”

“Are you high?”

“Yes, but also that’s not it. Sorry, I love you, we’ll talk tomorrow if I’m not dead.” He starts going to the stairs. “Nope,” he says, halting in his step and turning on himself at the same time. “Fire escape.”

He feels Margo’s eyes on him as he opens the window that leads to the fire escape. It’ll be fine, he tells himself. She’ll forgive him for bailing on his birthday party. Probably. Maybe. At worst, he’ll die and she won’t remember.

He climbs down the ladder and at this point, it’s more muscle memory than anything else. He’s almost at his place when his phone vibrates. It’s Idri. Eliot sighs, but picks up anyway.

“Yeah?”

“Where are you?” Idri asks. Eliot can hear the music of the party he just left in the background, and people cheering.

“Walking home.”

“But I’m at your party.”

“First of all, I didn’t invite you, Margo did, so don’t act like you’re entitled to my presence there.”

“What?”

“How about you try to spend the evening with someone you actually like, hmm? Someone who’s not sucking the life out of you like a fucking black hole?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Good-fucking-Bye, Idri.”

Eliot hangs up.

He sinks in a bath as soon as he gets home then goes to sleep. It feels like he hasn’t slept in his bed in days. Which, in a way, is true. He counts his deaths in his head.

Eleven.

-

He wakes up in his bed, which is always a surprise these days. He showers without dying, gets himself a coffee from the coffee shop down the street without dying, even manages to cross the street without dying and gets back home without dying.

And if he’s running high on adrenaline once he closes his front door, who the fuck can blame him?

He’s smoking on his couch when a thought comes to him, nagging and insistent. Maybe he is dying. Maybe he has a brain tumor, or brain trauma, and all of the death loop bullshit is an hallucination caused by it. Maybe he's in a coma.

Maybe what he needs to do is get his ass to a hospital and get his head checked.

He calls Henry.

“Eliot, what a surprise! I didn’t see you last night,” Henry says when he picks up.

Eliot taps the ash of his cigarette into a tray. “I know, I left early.”

“Is everything alright?”

“That’s actually what I’m calling about,” Eliot says. He clears his throat. “I don’t feel well, and I think something is wrong with me.”

He hears Henry sigh on the other side. “If this is about your mother—”

“No, Henry, it’s not. I think I have brain trauma. Or something like that.” He takes a deep breath. “Do you know anyone who could check my head, do an MRI or something, today?”

“Today?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Henry says after a pause.

Eliot’s phone pings with a text fifteen minutes later. It’s the address of a hospital in Midtown, with the name of a doctor and a time. Eliot grabs his coat and leaves his apartment.

He gets there early and hunts down the location of the doctor’s office. Fifth floor.

He gets into an elevator, tucking himself into a corner. The elevator stops at every floor, people coming in and out and in and out, a flurry of white coats and black jackets and too much perfume over the chemical smell of the hospital itself and it feels like he’s been in that elevator for hours.

The guy next to him is playing nervously with a ring box, opening and closing its lid with a clap that becomes more annoying the longer he does it.

Eliot stares at him, insistent, obnoxious and not subtle at all. The guy glances at him. He ducks his head and his lanky hair falls in front of his face, but at least he puts the box in his pocket and stops playing with it.

Eliot turns back toward the elevator doors. He might go to Margo’s tonight, depending on how the examination goes, see if she’s up for some chilling and maybe making her spill the beans about what’s going on with Hoberman.

(no, he hasn’t forgotten her face when he brought the dealer up, no matter how many times he's died since)

The elevator stops brutally between two floors, the main light going out and being replaced by the creepy red emergency one.

A woman near the doors starts panicking, pushing the alert button and trying to open the doors. There’s a clanking noise under them, and some creaking above them.

Then they’re falling. People yell and lay down on the floor, shouting at Eliot and the guy to do the same. For someone who was fidgeting and wringing the end of his hoodie sleeve that much, the guy doesn’t seem anxious about being in a free-falling elevator.

“You’re not freaking out?” Eliot tells him. The guy turns to him, looking surprised that someone is talking to him. “Don’t you get it? We’re gonna die.”

The guy shrugs. “It doesn’t matter, I die all the time.”


	7. Chapter 7

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom.

“What the fuck?” Eliot asks his reflection.

There’s another one.

Is there?

He leaves the party through the fire escape and Margo yells at him, but it doesn’t matter, he needs to survive this night so he can live another day and find the guy again.

Back home, he sits on his bed, his laptop and phone in front of him, a pack of cigarettes and his lighter on one side and an ashtray on the other.

The guy reminds him vaguely of someone, but it’s like trying to look at a star at night. You can see the star if you don’t look at the star directly, but as soon as you try to focus on it, it all becomes blurry and almost vanishes.

He didn’t sleep with him, that much he’s sure of. He’s an asshole, but he’s not that much of an asshole to forget the face of the people he gave an orgasm to—and he always makes sure he does, because he’s a gentleman like that.

The guy doesn’t look like someone who’d be on Tinder, but Eliot checks anyway.

No luck.

He lights a cigarette.

Wait.

The guy had an engagement ring box with a big logo on it.

Finding the store the logo belongs to takes him all of five minutes. It’s a nice but not too nice store downtown. Eliot has passed by it a few times without paying too much attention to its window. He’s not exactly the engagement ring type. But he remembers their sign proclaiming how well rated they are on Yelp.

The guy looks like someone who’d rate stuff on Yelp. Maybe. Hopefully.

Is it desperate to try to find a guy through Yelp? Yes. Yes it is.

Is Eliot desperate? Also yes.

He scrolls through useless comments and angry ones, not paying attention to the words but instead focusing on the pictures and praying to something that the guy has put a picture on his profile.

And he has.

“Quentin Coldwater?” Eliot says out loud. The name definitely doesn’t ring a bell. “Quentin Coldwater,” he repeats, rolling the words in his mouth. “Quentin. How the fuck do I know you, Quentin?”

He lies down and watches the cherry of his cigarette burn bright in rhythm with his breathing. Where has he seen those slouched shoulders and lanky hair…?

“Come one, brain.”

He crushes his cigarette in the ashtray and closes his eyes, focusing on the image of the guy in the elevator.

-

He wakes up, several hours later if the light filtering through his windows is any indication, with another image in his mind. Julia’s friend at the bodega.

“Fuck.”

He takes the quickest shower of his life and is out the door and on his way to the bodega in minutes.

Penny is behind the counter, looking a bit pale and bored as hell. Eliot grabs a coffee to go and approaches, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible.

“Hey, Penny,” he greets.

“Hey, man. You need cigarettes?”

“Sure. You feeling better?”

Penny frowns. “What?”

“I swung by last night and the girl covering for you said you were sick?”

“Oh, Julia? Yeah. I still feel like shit.” Penny slides two packs across the counter.

Eliot takes them. “Hey, do you know where Quentin lives by the way?” he asks, like it’s a totally normal question to ask while paying for his coffee and cigarettes.

Penny’s raised eyebrow doesn’t seem to think so. “You know Coldwater?”

Alright so that erases the last doubts Eliot had. “Kinda,” he shrugs, like it’s no big deal and his sanity is absolutely not depending on it. “I have something of his and I thought I’d bring it back to him.”

“Except you don’t know where he lives.”

“Exactly.”

“Why don’t you text him?”

“My phone died. Big party last night. It didn’t like falling into vodka.”

“You can leave it with me, I’ll give it back.”

Eliot swallows, trying to think of something. “He looked kinda rough last night? I wanna make sure he’s fine.”

Penny sighs and mutters something sounding like ‘damn you, Alice.’ “Okay fine. He’s on 6th and C,” he says, scribbling an address on a piece of paper and sliding it towards Eliot.

“Thank you, Penny. Take care.”

“Yeah yeah, see you, Eliot.”

He’s just one block away from Quentin’s place, but it feels like the walk there takes forever. When he gets to the building, the front door is locked, because of course it is.

He examines the buzzers next to it.

  1. Coldwater, 304.



Nothing happens when he pushes on it, no matter how many times he does.

A woman with long black curly hair and lipstick red enough to kill someone arrives, walking like she’s ready to punch the first person who gets in her way.

“Hi, I’m Quentin’s friend,” Eliot tells her because he clearly has no self-preservation instincts. “I think his buzzer is broken, can you let me in?”

The woman raises her eyebrows and crosses her arms, the keys in her hand visible and looking like weapons.

“How do I know you’re not a murderer?” she asks.

Eliot huffs a laugh. “My sparkling personality?”

The woman isn’t impressed. “Hm-mm. How many people have you murdered?”

“Uh, none?” Eliot answers, taken aback. That’s Quentin’s neighbor? No wonder he looks so nervous, he might be pissing his pants at the thought of meeting her in the hallways.

“That’s what a murderer would say,” the woman says. She opens the door and closes it behind her, giving Eliot the finger through the glass.

Eliot snorts. “Really? Do I know you?” he asks through the window, but the woman already has her back to him, disappearing further inside the building. “What the fuck,” he sighs.

Eliot waits. Sooner or later, Quentin will have to come out or come in.

Sure enough, after half an hour, he appears, walking on the sidewalk like someone has just kicked his puppy.

“Hi,” Eliot calls.

Quentin raises his head and freezes when his eyes meet Eliot’s. So. Doubt number two erased. Quentin does remember him, which means he’s also stuck in that shitty time loop.

“How did you find me?” Quentin asks, his eyes shifting around.

Eliot wriggles his eyebrows. “Magic.” A muscle clenches in the side of Quentin’s jaw that isn’t obscured by his hair. “Also we’re neighbors. I’m on 5th and B.”

“I don’t care,” Quentin says, walking past him toward the front door of his building. “I’m not interested.”

“Hey, I’m not selling anything,” Eliot protests without heat, following Quentin to the door. “Do you think it’s weird that we live in the same neighborhood? Do you think it means anything?” Quentin turns to him. “Do you think we’re dead? Or maybe we’re the same person?”

“What.”

“I got a couple of theories I’m working on. Us being the same person is my current favorite,” Eliot finishes, producing a cigarette from his pack and offering another to Quentin.

Quentin shakes his head, frowning. “No, I—How would that even work—what could possibly—”

Eliot puts back the other cigarette in the pack. “Alright let’s test this,” he cuts in, taking his lighter out of his pocket. He lights it and puts his hand over the flame. “Do you feel this? Does it hurt? Is it hurting you? ‘Cause it’s hurting me.”

“Oh my god, stop! Just—” Quentin groans. Eliot lights his cigarette and puts the lighter back in his pocket. “Why are you doing this?” Quentin asks, raking his fingers through his hair.

“You’re the only lead I got.”

“Lead?”

“Yeah. A clue. To get out of this, whatever this is.”

“There is no way out,” Quentin says, tense. “And you know what? I kinda liked it. I had control, I—I knew what was coming. But then you showed up and you lead me down this—this weird path, like—like a carcinogenic siren!” he finishes, almost yelling, looking agitated and intense and frankly? He’s a bit hot.

“You’re welcome,” Eliot replies with a wave of his cigarette.

“No! I’m not thanking you!” Quentin cries out and Eliot can tell he’s getting frustrated. Anyone in a mile radius probably can. “You showed up and everything has—has gone...off. I learned something I really didn’t wanna know.” Quentin pauses and takes a big breath. “Alice, my girlfriend of nine years, has been cheating on me,” he says in a too calm voice. The kind of voice that you know precedes a total nervous breakdown. “She broke up with me on the first night, without giving me a reason, and I never got one afterwards, but you show up and suddenly I learn that she was cheating on me.”

“Wow,” Eliot says. “That’s heavy. Listen, if we die and you want to meet up again, I’ll be at my birthday party yesterday night.”

The anxiety on Quentin’s face fades out. “You’re restarting on your birthday party?” he asks.

“Ah, yes. Yes, I am. The party is at the old factory on 10th and A, you can’t miss it.” Eliot pulls on his cigarette. “And you know, I can tell that you’re really upset about this Alice thing, but we literally only just met so, like, her cheating on you is not on me.” Quentin looks down at his feet, chewing on his lower lip. “As far as I know,” Eliot continues, “we’re in this shit together. Now, I’m gonna let you meditate on that and I’ll see you next time.”

He figures it’s better to let Quentin think on it rather than keeps on going with the conversation right now. The guy looks positively lost and confused and so not ready to tackle the metaphysical and or supernatural causes and consequences of their time looped lives.

-

That night, he meets Fen at the dive bar and they drink and laugh and talk, but this time he doesn’t sit on a bench in the park afterwards. He intends to go straight back home, and he doesn’t cross to the other sidewalk when the one he’s on has a particularly long scaffolding on it.

He probably should have.


	8. Chapter 8

He leaves Margo’s bathroom but stays at the party, in case Quentin shows up.

He hugs Margo and makes Fen a cocktail and he pretends it’s the first time he’s living that night. He ignores the glances Blond Guy throws him and keeps an eye on the front door.

Quentin shows up a bit after eleven. Eliot walks to him with two glasses.

“Hi, welcome to yesterday,” he says, shoving a glass in Quentin’s hand.

Quentin’s smile is a bit brittle on the edge, but it looks real. “Thanks.”

“So glad you made it. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

“It’s a cool place,” Quentin says, hesitating a little like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to say that or not.

Eliot feels his lips quirking into a smile. As far as people go, Quentin isn’t the worst to be stuck in a time loop with.

-

They end up sprawled on the couches—or rather, Eliot sprawls and Quentin sits twisted like a pretzel, a leg under him and the other folded against his chest—and Eliot decides here and there that Quentin is probably not straight. It is a truth universally acknowledged that queer people don’t know how to sit properly, and Eliot is right at the top of that list. Takes one to know one.

“Why do you think this is happening to us?” Eliot asks as he blows rings of smoke towards the ceiling.

He sees Quentin push his hair behind his ear from the corner of his eye. “Purgatory?” Quentin offers. “You know. For being bad people.”

Eliot snorts. “Okay, well, I don’t know about you but I haven’t murdered anyone.”

Quentin doesn’t reply. Eliot glances at him, in case the silence is actually a confession, but he finds Quentin staring at something behind Eliot’s shoulder.

“Are you having a stroke?” Eliot asks.

Quentin refocuses on him. “Uh? Oh, no—it’s just. The guy who Alice was cheating on me with? He—he’s here.” Eliot twists to see who Quentin is talking about. “Don’t look!” Quentin hisses.

Eliot doesn’t see anyone looking like the obvious culprit, so he turns back to Quentin. “Okay, point him out to me later and I’ll push him down the stairs. Trust me, they’re deadly. But for now, we have bigger things to worry about. Life and death stuff.”

Quentin stares at him with despair in his eyes but doesn’t protest, so Eliot figures they should start their investigation.

“Come on,” he says, standing up.

“Where are we going?” Quentin asks.

“The bathroom.”

“What?”

“Come on, chop chop.”

Eliot starts crossing the loft, not bothering to check if Quentin is actually following him or not, but when he arrives in front of the bathroom door, surprisingly free of waiting people, he hears him behind him, shuffling his feet.

They stand in Margo’s bathroom. Admittedly, when you’re not being sent back there after dying dozens of times, it’s a very normal looking bathroom, on the rather luxurious side, even. Margo has very good interior design tastes.

“This is where you restart?” Quentin asks, taking the room in. Eliot hums. “I restart in my bathroom too.”

“My current theory is that I’m being cursed by whoever died in a tragic accident in this factory. As revenge for having a party to the site of their death. Or something.”

“My building isn’t an ancient factory and I’ve never been here before, though,” Quentin remarks.

Eliot sighs. “This isn’t gonna be very fun if you keep rejecting my theories.”

“You rejected mine.”

“Yeah, because there’s no such thing as Purgatory. Even the fucking Pope said so.”

Quentin shrugs. “Doesn’t mean we’re not being punished for being morally wrong people.”

“So the universe is moral, but it shares your views on morality?” Eliot taunts. Quentin just makes a ‘why the fuck not’ face at him and Eliot rolls his eyes, and he’s tired and just want to go the fuck to bed and wake up in a normal fucking universe where he’s not stuck in a time loop with a nervous nerd. “Alright, let’s try your way,” he concedes.

Fen and Margo are in the hallway when they exit the bathroom.

“Oh, great, I was just coming to find you,” Eliot says.

“What were you doing in there?” Fen asks.

“Who the fuck is this guy,” Margo says at the same time.

Rather than answering any of their questions, Eliot dives straight into the matter. “Have I ever done anything, you know, memorably wrong to either of you?”

Fen adjusts her necklace. “Yeah. You said I shouldn’t adopt these two Chow Chow puppies because I have a small space and live in a shared house but they needed a home and I could’ve made a few changes,” she says quickly, her voice breaking every few words.

Eliot stares at her. That’s her memorably wrong thing? What the hell. He turns to Margo.

“Do you wanna get in on this?”

“Oh no, I love that you’re a cunt,” she says and then takes a sip of her drink. “It makes me feel morally superior.”

Eliot nods a few times. “Yeah, yeah okay, that’s a fair way to totally not judge people. Anything else?” he adds to Fen.

“Actually, yeah,” she says, as they all move toward the main room.

“What?”

“When you laughed when I said I wanted to move upstate and live in the countryside? I really took it to heart. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be living in an old farmhouse, raising two Chow Chows. I’d have a completely different life.”

Eliot does his best not to roll his eyes. “Fen, it’s not my fault if you take everything I say like the fucking Gospel, alright? Beside, I thought you liked fucking your way through New York.” She glares at him. “Okay, should we open suggestions from the whole group?”

“You know what?” Margo says. “That’s a great idea.”

“Okay.” Eliot takes a glass and a knife from the island counter and hits the glass a few times until the people in the room turn to him. “Hi, great to see you, thanks for coming to my birthday party, lovely planned by my dear Bambi,” he says, raising the glass towards Margo. People cheer and clap and the smile she gives them is tight and not genuine at all. Eliot feels the incoming disaster and decides to meet it head on. “It means a lot to me that you’re here, and something else that means a lot to me is honesty. So if you all would be so kind as to tell me if you think I’m a bad person, or maybe if I committed some serious misdeeds? If you could come and talk to me about that tonight, that would be really fucking great, okay?”

There’s grimaces, and shifting eyes, and shuffling feet in front of him. He even catches Quentin’s worried face and, alright, he’s going to get roasted within an inch of his life tonight.

“For my birthday, tell me if I’m a bad person,” he concludes.

Margo claps and comes stand next to him. “Thank you, El, for this great fucking toast. You’re an asshole!” she exclaims, raising her glass toward the crowd then clinking it against his.

People laugh and relax, returning to their drinks, their chats, the dance floor.

Curiously, no one comes to confront him afterwards.

“Here goes your theory,” he says to Quentin. “I gave everybody an opportunity to tell me how much I suck, and nothing.”

Quentin looks at him like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t get the chance.

“Hi,” Idri’s voice says from behind Eliot.

Eliot briefly screws his eyes shut, trying not to curse, before turning like seeing Idri doesn’t make him want to jump from the nearest window.

“Hi,” he says back.

“It’s been a while.”

Eliot hums, trying to appear as sincere as possible. “Yeah, hm-mm, I guess for you it has, uh?”

“You look great.”

Eliot does his best not to give in to the nervous laughter bubbling inside him. “I wear the same thing all the time.”

Idri suddenly seems to notice Quentin, who’s awkwardly standing a few feet behind Eliot. “I’m Idri,” he says, extending his hand. Quentin shakes it.

“This is Quentin,” Eliot says. “He’s basically a high strung super nerd the universe has tasked me with baby-sitting. Would you say that’s a fair assessment?” he asks Quentin, who glares at him.

“Sure,” Quentin says flatly.

“Speaking of nerds, how’s Ess?”

“He’s great. Won a prize for a poem he wrote about the Williamsburg Bridge.”

“That’s great,” Eliot says with such a fake enthusiasm he wants to wince. “Ess is great, he’s his kid,” he tells Quentin who looks like he just wants the floor to open up and swallow him whole. Eliot can relate. “Idri and I were a thing for a time,” he says.

“How do you know he’s great? You’ve never met him,” Idri says sounding annoyed and angry at the same time. “You were supposed to meet him, but you backed out.”

“I had every intention of meeting him, alright? I just, uh—” Eliot gestures with his cigarette. “Overslept,” he says lamely. “I even had a book I wanted to give him!  _ Fillory and Further _ .”

“I love that book,” Quentin says softly.

Idri doesn’t seem impressed. “Why would you even bring him up?”

Eliot clenches the hand not holding his cigarette. “You’re supposed to ask people about their kids, okay? It’s polite, it gives everybody a moment to pretend there’s gonna be a future.”

Idri sighs. “I’m gonna get a seltzer,” he says and turns away.

“You do that,” Eliot tells his back. “What an asshole.”

“He probably was an asshole because you were pissing him off on purpose, though,” Quentin says.

“Quentin, sexualizing self-hatred is the hallmark of any relationship that begins with extra-marital infidelity.” Quentin stares at him. “What?” Eliot asks when Quentin just keeps on staring.

“You skipped on meeting his son and you broke his marriage?”

Eliot snorts. “He broke that shit all by himself.”

Quentin doesn’t stop staring. Eliot raises his eyebrows trying to convey ‘what the fuck do you want now’ with his entire face. Quentin jerks his head in the direction Idri left. Eliot scrunches up his nose.

“Really?” he whines.

“If my theory is correct, then we need to make amends to get the fuck out of here.”

“I’m not doing a 12-Steps program with you,” Eliot warns, but starts moving toward the bar anyway.

-

He finds Idri next to a window, white knuckling a glass of sparkling water.

“I’m sorry,” Eliot says and it feels like someone ripped his throat out just to say it.

Idri glances up at him, his face betraying nothing of his emotions. “For what, Eliot?”

Eliot leans against the wall. “For ditching you and Ess that time we were supposed to meet. I—I was scared,” he admits and he’s a little surprised by it.

“Of my son?” Idri asks.

“Well, yes, obviously. I’m the asshole who broke up his parents. And he’s a teenage boy. He was going to hate me, that breakfast together was going to be a disaster, and then I was going to feel like shit, all for nothing.”

“It meant something to me, Eliot,” Idri says, staring at him in that unflinching way of his. “I thought, maybe if he met you, if he saw the two of us together, being happy, he would understand why me and his mother could no longer be a thing. My marriage was broken long before you and I hooked up for the first time, Eliot.”

Eliot bites his lips. Deep down, he already knew that. He knew what it meant for Idri for him to meet Ess. And he deliberately fucked it up. Is he always setting himself up for failure? He knew skipping on that meeting would further break his relationship with Idri. Is that why he did it? Because he was afraid of commitment, of having something stable for once in his life? Is self-sabotage is signature move?

The answer to all of these questions is yes, obviously. It’s just easier to never confront his fear of commitment and abandonment and play the asshole all the time.

“I’m really sorry, Idri,” he says softly. “I know it’s too late and I can’t do anything to repair what I’ve done in the past, but I’m truly sorry I hurt you like this.”

Idri observes him for a long time before he says anything more.

“Thank you,” he finally says, and it sounds sincere.

Eliot nods, his throat too tight to speak, and peels himself from the wall, grabbing a bottle of whiskey on his way back to where Quentin looks like he’s having an aneurysm.

“Wanna get drunk?” Eliot asks him.

“Fuck yes,” Quentin says, relief clear in his voice.

They sit on the fire escape, passing the bottle between them.

“Did you have a good talk?” Quentin asks.

Eliot shrugs. “I guess. It was weird to be open.” Quentin makes a non-committal sound. “What happened to you?” Eliot asks. “You looked like you were ready to kill someone earlier,” he clarifies when Quentin just raises a questioning eyebrow.

Quentin sighs. “I just caught the guy Alice has been sleeping with trying to get in bed with your friend.”

“Which one?” Eliot holds out the bottle to him.

“The one with the blond hair,” Quentin replies, taking the bottle. He takes a generous sip of it.

“Oh. That’s Fen. Who’s the guy again?”

“Name’s Mike. Kinda stocky. Blond. Short beard.”

Something court-circuits in Eliot’s brain. Quentin is describing someone sounding suspiciously like Blond Guy. Which is confirmed when Quentin holds out his phone and Eliot is met with Blond Guy’s Facebook page. Mike McCormick.

“Holy shit,” Eliot whispers before noticing something frankly revolting. “He’s a Republican?!”

“That’s what you take out of this?” Quentin says looking utterly outraged.

“Well, yeah,” Eliot says, not sorry for two seconds. “I hooked up with this guy before my first death.”

Quentin grimaces. “I really didn’t want to know.” He sighs. “Alice has been cheating on me with a guy who’s sleeping with everyone. That’s just great.” He takes another sip before offering the bottle to Eliot, who takes it gratefully and drinks deeply.

The alcohol burns but it’s good, it’s what he needs right now.

There’s a Republican at his birthday party and he hooked up with him in one of the versions of this night.

Absolutely terrible.

-

They keep passing the bottle back and forth, and then stay on the fire escape even when it’s empty and the night is getting cold. Sitting on the cold metal is nice and Quentin looks like he’s relaxing more and more as they stay there, watching the few stars bright enough to pierce through New York’s light pollution and the cloud of whiskey in their brains.

“Hey, Quentin?” Eliot says.

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry Alice treated you this way. You seem to be a cool guy.”

Quentin huffs a self-deprecating laugh. “I’m everything but cool. I’m a nervous, anxious mess, and she got tired of it. I understand her, you know. I’m tired of myself too. To be honest, I feel like this is the first time I’m not tense in, I don’t know, years?”

“You should drink more often,” Eliot tries to joke, even if he knows the whiskey isn’t the reason for how Quentin is feeling. There’s a certain peace that comes with the absurdity of being stuck in a time loop.

Quentin smiles from the corner of his lips. “It’s not the booze,” he says. “It’s because nothing matters at the moment. I could go run in the middle of the street naked and it wouldn’t have any fucking consequence because everything will just reset when I die.”

“Yeah,” Eliot says. Then a thought occurs to him and he groans. “Oh fuck, does that mean I’m gonna have to apologize to Idri every time we restart?”

Quentin makes an apologetic looking face. “Probably?”

“Ugh. As if this situation couldn’t suck more.”

“Or don’t apologize, and only do it when we’re sure we’re out of this.”

Eliot nods emphatically. “Yes, I will be doing that, thank you for the idea.”

“Although, you apologizing to him could be a necessity for the loop to stop.”

“Ugh, way to shoot down my hope.”

“You’re welcome,” Quentin says with a wave of his hand. “I should probably go home,” he says. When he tries to get to his feet, he sways a little, definitely not as sober as he looked a few seconds ago.

Eliot stands up as well, not swaying, but feeling light headed anyway. “Let’s get down.” Quentin makes a move to go back inside. “Ah ah ah, no,” Eliot stops him with a hand on his arm. “We’re going down here,” he says nodding to the fire escape ladder.

Quentin looks positively confused. “Why?”

“I died four times in the stairs. Or was it five? In any case, we are absolutely not taking the stairs. Trust me, the fire escape is much safer.”

“If you say so,” Quentin says slowly, clearly doubting Eliot’s judgment.

They get to street level unharmed and starts walking.

“Do you remember your deaths?” Eliot asks after a block.

“Yeah. Do you?”

Eliot nods. “I froze to death once.”

Quentin winces. “I got electrocuted.”

They walk together, trading stories about their loops, until they reach Eliot’s place.

“I’d say we should exchange numbers but it’ll disappear from our phones next time we die,” Quentin says.

“Meet me here at 10 tomorrow?” Eliot offers. “That is, if we don’t die between then and now. If we do, meet me at the party?”

“Sure. Good night, Eliot.”

-

Eliot wakes up at 6. It would be an abnormality in his normal non-time loopy life, and it’s an abnormality now. What is even more abnormal, is that he wakes up thinking about the book he said he wanted to gift to Ess.  _ Fillory and Further _ , book one. He remembers reading it again and again when he was a young teenager, the first few years he was living with Henry. At the time, he would imagine that he was just like the Chatwins, being taken care of by someone that wasn’t family, and that he too would be whisked away in a marvelous world if he would just open the right door.

He has tried every door, every closet of Henry’s brownstone, but he has remained firmly in New York City, no matter how much he wished to be anywhere else in the world.

Eliot starts his coffee machine.

Maybe he still has the book somewhere.

He lights up a cigarette and scours his bookshelves, to no avail. He sits heavily on his couch, the hiss of the machine and the dripping coffee the only noises in his apartment. He pictures his bedroom at Henry’s, the tiny bookshelf crammed under the windowsill. Maybe it’s still there.

He springs up from the couch, turns off the coffee machine and leaves for Henry’s place.

-

He lets himself in with the keys Henry insisted he needed to have. There’s no jazz playing in the living room yet, so Eliot figures Henry is still getting ready for the day. Right on cue, he hears him cough upstairs.

Eliot browses the downstairs shelves, knowing very well  _ Fillory _ won’t be there.

“Hello, Eliot,” Henry says from the top of the stairs. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I wasn’t sure you were up. Didn’t want to wake you.”

Henry comes down the stairs and Eliot follows him into the kitchen.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Henry asks, taking out milk, eggs, butter, and bacon out of the fridge.

Eliot sits. “Can’t I just want to see my dear foster dad?” he says lightly. “Your apples are rotten,” he adds more seriously when he catches sight of the fruit bowl. Flies are buzzing around it.

“Hm? Oh, right, I haven’t been paying attention. So. Why are you here, Eliot?”

“Do you still have my old stuff?”

Henry turns on his coffee maker. “Yes, I believe I do. Do you need something?”

“Just a book.” Eliot shrugs.

“I think I have everything in a box in your old room. You can go look after breakfast.”

Henry breaks six eggs in a bowl and starts whisking them up with a fork. Eliot stands up to grab two mugs out of the cupboard above the coffee machine.

“Hey, Henry, if you were to die today, would you be ready for it?” he asks. “Would you feel at peace with your life?”

Henry looks up from his bowl for a second. “Yes and no,” he replies, still whisking the eggs.

“So how do you get to just yes?”

The whisking stops. “You don’t,” Henry says, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. “Holding two incompatible ideas in your head at the same time and accepting both of them? That’s the best of being human. Yes, no, good, bad, life, death. You get it.”

“Hmm.”

Henry takes out a pan, puts it on the stove. There’s the click-click-click of the burner and—

-

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom, breathing hard, white-knuckling the edge of the sink.

Henry’s house just fucking blew up.

He splashes water on his face, tries to wash the smell of gas from his nose. His hands are shaking when he wipes them on a towel.

The girl is pounding on the door.


	9. Chapter 9

Quentin shows up much more quickly this time.

“Sorry I couldn’t make it tomorrow. Bike accident.”

Eliot pours himself a drink. “Don’t worry. Gas explosion.”

He bottoms up his whiskey and closes his eyes, savoring the way the alcohol burns him inside. Now that he’s calm—well, calm-ish—he expects the usual loudness of the party to register fully, but the noise around them is actually...quite normal?

He opens his eyes.

The living room isn’t nearly as packed as it used to be the previous times.

“Is there less people than before?” he asks Quentin, his eyes still scanning the loft.

“What?”

Eliot turns to him. “Do you find that there’s less people here at this party, than the last time?”

Quentin looks around, shrugs. “I don’t know—I mean. Maybe.”

Eliot rolls his eyes. “Super helpful, thank you.” He pours himself another drink and pours one for Quentin too, despite his uselessness at this very moment.

“Hi,” someone says behind him and oh yeah that’s Idri, again, and he’s gonna have to have the talk, again.

He makes a face at Quentin, who widens his eyes and jerks his head imperceptibly behind the rim of his glass. Eliot grimaces but turns to face his ex. Better to rip the band-aid now.

“Hi, Idri. Quentin, can I leave you alone for a sec, I gotta talk to him?”

Quentin shuffles on his feet. “Yeah, sure, go.”

Eliot goes straight to the point this time, and Idri seems to accept his apologies, so yay, good action of the evening: check.

Eliot moves back to where he left Quentin, but Margo’s voice reaches him first.

“Hey! I don’t know who the fuck you are and I don’t know what’s going on, but either you two suck each other’s dicks or get the fuck out of my apartment!”

Eliot walks faster. Margo stands between Quentin and Blond Guy—Mike—and she looks positively pissed.

“Get the fuck out!” she yells when Quentin tries to protest.

Quentin throws one last glance at Mike, grabs a bottle of whiskey and disappears in the hallway. There’s no sound of someone falling down the stairs, so Eliot figures Quentin is fine. There’s a high probability of it anyway. Or maybe he’s a quiet dying person. Who knows.

If they both survive the night, they’ll probably meet in front of his place at 10, like they had planned before. If not, they’ll meet up here.

Henry shows up soon after, coughing up his lungs and complaining about the lack of elevator. The smell of gas comes back in Eliot’s nostrils.

“Henry!” Eliot hurries to him.

“Eliot, happ—”

“Henry, I need you to listen to me very carefully alright? Do not, and I repeat, do not use your stove until you have someone look at it. There’s a gas leak and if you use it, you will fucking die.”

Henry frowns and smiles at the same time. “What are you talking about? Are you high?”

“What? No! Henry, this is serious, I am serious. Promise me you will not use your stove, okay?”

Henry takes a deep breath and puts his hands on Eliot’s shoulder. “I promise. Now, are you going to let me die of thirst or are you going to give me a drink?”

The rest of the night is abnormally normal, more quiet party between friends than giant party-slash-orgies-slash-it’s probably not safe to have that many people in one place, as it definitely was the first ten times or so Eliot lived it.

He goes home with a kiss to Margo and one to Fen.

He hopes this is the last time. He cleared things up with Idri. He hasn’t fought with his girls. He warned Henry.

He goes to bed and hopes Quentin is okay too.

-

In the morning, he still goes to Henry’s to make sure the gas is turned off. He steps into the foyer, hears Henry wake up upstairs. He slips into the kitchen, kneel down in front of the stove and opens the lower cabinet door hiding the gas faucet. He turns it off.

“What on Earth are you doing?” Henry says behind him.

“Turning off your gas faucet so you don’t accidentally blow up your house.”

Henry tsks. “You worry too much, I used the stove before the party and it was fine.”

Eliot stands up. “Maybe it was then, but I guarantee you it isn’t now.”

Henry rolls his eyes. “Fine. Do you want to eat something?” He opens up the fridge, and takes out a container of greek yogurt and some jam.

“Your apples are rotten,” Eliot says, his eyes on the fruit bowl. The apples are even more black and brown and utterly disgusting than the previous time.

“Hm? Oh yeah, I have forgotten about them. Do you want some tea?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for Eliot to answer and puts the kettle on the stove before turning the button.

“I turned it off, Hen—”

-

He's back in Margo’s bathroom.

“FUCK! FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!”

He gets out of the bathroom and almost collides with Quentin.

“I got hit by a car,” Quentin says.

“Gas explosion. Again,” Eliot answers. “Wait. So you didn’t die on the stairs?”

“No.”

“That’s so unfair.”

“Do you think we’re dying at the same time?” Quentin asks out of the blue.

Eliot squints. “Do _you_ think we’re dying at the same time?” he asks back.

Quentin shrugs and looks away, dislodging a strand of hair from behind his ear as he does so.

“Maybe.”

“Okay so, let’s live our lives separately tonight and keep track of what time it is and next time we compare notes. Sounds good?”

“Yeah, sure. See you next time.”

Quentin leaves. By the stairs, the asshole.

-

Eliot apologizes to Idri and pretends he’s not weirded out by the fact that there’s less and less people present at this party. A bouquet of flowers on the windowsill is dead and there’s a rotting banana on the counter and Margo doesn’t seem bothered by it, but it’s seriously starting to freak Eliot’s out and he very much wants to get the fuck out of there.

So he does.

He walks home, grabs Henry’s keys and takes the subway to the Upper West Side. At Henry’s house, he finds a discarded cardboard box and cuts it into a sign that he puts over the stove. DO NOT USE – GAS LEAK.

Then he takes out his phone and dials 311. He reports the gas leak as “pretty fucking urgent actually” then turns off the faucet. It didn’t do shit the last time but hey, better safe than dead. He steps out of the kitchen and into the foyer, ready to leave and hoping the gas emergency services will be there first thing in the morning.

He opens the front door as silently as possible.

A gunshot rings behind him and white hot pain fills his chest. He looks down, and there’s a red stain spreading over his waistcoat. He collapses on the floor. His vision blurs. Henry is hurrying up to him, a revolver in one hand.

“Oh, dear lord, Eliot, I thought you were a burglar—” Henry says more but the pressure he starts applying on Eliot’s chest cuts out Eliot’s ability to understand anything. He can see tears in Henry’s eyes and uh, that’s the first time he’s seeing his foster dad showing that kind of emotions.

He tastes blood in his mouth, feels it bubbling past his lips and choking him.

-

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom.

He slides down to the floor, his hands clutched against his chest and tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Fuck.”

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, just that there’s no pounding on the door this time. He’s afraid of opening the bathroom door and finding no one in the loft.

He rubs at his face, gets to his feet.

There are people in the loft. Not as much as the first time, but not less than the last time. At least, he thinks so.

“Asthma attack,” Quentin says.

Eliot startles. He hasn’t heard him come in. “Gunshot,” he replies. “When was it, for you?”

“Around 1 am I think. I don’t know I was sleeping and I just woke up and I couldn’t breathe. I haven’t had an asthma attack in years. Like. I’m talking more than two decades here.” Quentin tucks his hair behind his ear. “You?”

“The same. 1 am,” Eliot says and his voice sounds flat and empty. He looks around the loft, to the people oblivious to the tragedy that has become his life. “Quentin," he says, more desperate sounding than he likes. "What if they keep going?”

Quentin frowns. “Who?”

“Them,” Eliot says, gesturing at the other people in the loft. “Everyone who’s not us.”

“What do you mean?”

“What if we’re just visiting different timelines and in all of those timelines, we die, but they keep going?”

Quentin swallows visibly. “That’s bleak.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Eliot sees Idri approaching from the corner of his eye. He extends a trembling hand to stop him from coming any closer. “I am sorry about not meeting Ess, I was scared and I’m a coward, now please fuck off!” he shouts, his voice wavering slightly. He just wants it to stop. He just wants to go to bed and be okay.

The look of pain and confusion on Idri’s face is too much for Eliot to bear at the moment. He grabs Quentin’s arm and tugs him toward the fire escape.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

They go to the park near Margo’s building, sit on a bench. 

“Gunshot, you said,” Quentin says in the silence between them.

Eliot nods. “Yeah.” His throat is tight. He can still feel the blood gurgling and choking him. He lights a cigarette, hoping the acrid taste of the smoke will wash away the metal of the blood. 

“A random shot or should we be worried that someone wants you dead?”

Eliot huffs a laugh. “Apart from the Universe, you mean?” He glances at Quentin who looks like he’s seriously expecting an actual answer. “It wasn’t a random shot. Someone thought I was trying to rob their place.”

“Fuck.”

“Yep.”

Eliot gathers his coat around him. It’s cold and the wind is getting stronger. “We should go home,” he says, the memory of freezing to death at the forefront of his mind.

-

They meet in front of Eliot’s place the next morning.

“So. Did you die?” Quentin asks as they walk toward a diner for some well deserved pancakes.

Eliot shakes his head. “Did you?”

“No. I’m telling you, I think we die at the same time, every time.”

“So what? Should we just stay stuck together 24/7 to make sure nothing happens for the rest of our lives if we don’t want to start again?”

Quentin shrugs. “Or that would just make the universe provoke another elevator situation.”

“Great. What do we do, then?”

“Try to survive long enough to figure it out?”

Just as Quentin finishes speaking, something cracks above their heads. Eliot looks up. They really don’t have the time to move away from under that falling AC unit, do they?


	10. Chapter 10

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom.

He wastes no time and crosses the loft (there’s less people, and another bouquet of flowers is rotting, there’s no girl banging on the door, there’s no fish in the fish tank and Eliot needs to get the fuck out of there, stat).

He kisses Margo on the cheek, grabs his coat and climbs down the fire escape.

He goes to Quentin’s apartment directly, pressing the button of the buzzer so hard it almost stays stuck down.

“It’s me,” he says to Quentin’s laconic “yeah?”

“Third floor,” Quentin says through the crackling speaker.

Eliot takes the stairs two steps at a time. When he gets to the third floor, Quentin is leaning against the door-frame of his open front door.

“Did you run here?” he asks, sounding slightly amused.

“The party is getting creepy.”

Quentin jerks his head toward his apartment and goes in. Eliot follows him inside.

“Creepy how?” Quentin asks.

“There’s less and less people,” Eliot says, closing the door behind him. “Margo’s fishes have disappeared but the fish tank’s still there.”

“My rabbit has disappeared too.”

Eliot sits heavily on Quentin’s old looking couch. He realizes it’s actually the first time he sees Quentin’s apartment. There are bookshelves against every wall, threatening to break under the weight of the absolute insane number of books stacked on and around them. Most of the furniture looks like hands me down and found on the curb stuff. It’s homey, despite the very empty rabbit cage pushed away in a corner.

“You know,” he says. “If I was inventing hell, it’d look a lot like this.”

Quentin, still standing up, looks around. “My apartment?”

“No, your apartment is nice. I mean the situation, that time loop bullshit thing.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, the rest of our lives depend on each other? That’s my own personal nightmare.”

“Oh,” Quentin repeats, this time looking like Eliot just kicked his puppy—or rabbit, in their case.

“No, Quentin, no, that’s not you specifically,” Eliot says, but Quentin’s face is still doing that thing where it feels like Eliot just committed some kind of unforgivable crime. “I just don’t want to be attached to anyone,” he says bluntly. “I would like to at least maintain an illusion of free will, you know?”

Quentin finally sits down next to him. “Okay,” he says, sort of defeated and letting his arm fall heavily against his legs in that universal ‘I fucking give up’ gesture. “What should we do?”

-

Which is how they end up basically comparing their lives in the most basic 20 questions way.

“I’m an only child,” Quentin says.

“Me too,” Eliot answers. Quentin scribbles down on the notebook he has in his lap. “Parents?”

“Divorced. Alive, but my dad is sick. That’s why I was in the hospital elevator that time.” Quentin sighs. “You?”

“Never knew my dad, but my mom is dead.”

“Sorry about that.”

Eliot waves Quentin’s words away. “It’s fine. Hey, can I smoke here?”

Quentin grimaces, his nose scrunching up in a way Eliot tries very hard not to find cute.

“Could you do it outside?”

“If I go outside I could die. And you with me. Also if there’s any lingering smell, it’ll disappear at the next reset.”

Quentin shrugs defeatedly. “Yeah, sure, why the fuck not.”

“Thank you. Hey, how did you die?” Eliot asks as he pulls a cigarette free from his pack.

“Didn’t we have this conversation already?”

Eliot looks up from the tip of his cigarette that he’s carefully lighting on fire. “I mean your first death,” he says, releasing a plume of smoke.

“Oh.” Quentin closes the notebook, puts it on top of the pile of books on the side of the couch that is apparently serving as a side table. “I—I don’t know. I don’t remember.” He frowns in a way that suggests he only just realized it.

“What do you mean you can’t remember? I remember my first time—that’s a weird thing to say, isn’t it? But anyway, I was hit by a car. While on my way to buy cigarettes. Eh.” Eliot snorts. “Smoking does kill.”

Quentin stares at him. “I don’t—I don’t remember anything. All I remember is suddenly being in my bathroom and then living my evening knowing exactly what was going to happen.”

Eliot blows out smoke, watching Quentin closely. “So you don’t remember anything, at all?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Maybe your first death is what started this entire thing?”

“Why?”

“Not a fucking clue but right now, it’s the only unknown factor we have.” Eliot pulls on his cigarette. “We have to trigger your memory,” he says decisively.

Quentin’s eyebrows draw together. “Uh...How?” he asks in a way that makes it quite obvious that he has many concerns about this and most of them are about Eliot’s mental sanity. Which. Yeah, that's fair.

“Lucky for you, I know a professional,” Eliot says with a wink. Judging from Quentin’s facial expression, that wasn’t as reassuring as Eliot hoped. He gets up. “Come on, we have to catch him before the house explode.”

Quentin’s eyes get comically wide.

-

Henry opens his door and makes a very confused face.

“Eliot? I was just on my way to your birthday party, what are you doing here?” he says, moving on the side to let them in nonetheless.

Eliot tugs a very hesitant Quentin behind him.

“We have a problem and I’m hoping you could help us solve it.”

Henry closes the door behind them. “Very well, let’s go into the kitchen. Do you want tea?”

“Nope! No tea!” Eliot shouts. “You have a gas leak in your stove, do not use it until someone has fixed it, alright?”

Henry raises his eyebrows. “And how could you possibly know that?”

“Just…trust me on this one. Please.”

Henry lets out a put upon sigh. “Fine.”

They sit around the table, Quentin looking more uncomfortable with every passing seconds.

“What seems to be the problem?” Henry asks.

“Quentin here can’t remember anything from last night,” Eliot says. “Like, big black hole.”

Henry frowns, his eyes shifting from Eliot to Quentin and back to Eliot. “That’s unfortunate,” he says cautiously. “I don’t really see how I can help in anything, here.”

“Can you, I don’t know, trigger his memory? You work in psychology, right?”

Henry lets out another long, deep sigh. “I’m a scholar, Eliot. Not a practitioner.”

“Okay but what would you suggest? Hypnosis? Sensory-deprivation tank? Ayahuasca?”

“Don’t do drugs,” Henry replies sternly. “I’m sorry but recovering one’s memories is a long and tedious process, not something that you can do in a day in your living room.”

Quentin wriggles on his chair. “It’s alright. It’s fine, really, I—I’m not big on psychologists and psychiatrists, like no offense, but I saw enough of them when I was a teenager and I don’t need any more people thinking that I’m crazy.”

“No one thinks that you’re crazy, Quentin,” Eliot says softly.

“Beside, we do not use that word in this house,” Henry adds. “Did Eliot ever tell you about his mother?” he asks. Eliot resists the urge to facepalm. Quentin shakes his head. “Eliot’s mother was brilliant, just like Eliot—”

“Eye roll,” Eliot cuts dryly.

“—but she would get fixated on little things, obsessed even. She’d have a thing about purple—the color of healing or something like that she had read somewhere, or about a certain flower. Then there was the mirrors.” Eliot tenses. He remembers the mirrors, and he really wishes Henry would drop it. “One day,” Henry says, “she shattered all the mirrors in her house. When I came to take Eliot to school, there was glass everywhere. Even in his hair.”

“Thank you, Henry. That’s enough,” Eliot says. There’s no tremor in his voice, but he knows it’s a close thing. “It wasn’t that bad,” he says to Quentin.

Henry shakes his head. “It was that bad. I was there.”

“So was I!”

“Why—why the mirrors?” Quentin asks.

“Reflection,” Henry hazards. “Proof of existence. Another pair of eyes.”

-

They leave Henry’s house after he promises not to use the stove. They’re not much more advanced on their search, but at least there was no gas explosion this time.

“I still think we should try hypnosis,” Eliot says on their way to the subway station.

“What if I can’t remember it because it’s like highly traumatic?” Quentin asks.

Eliot stares. “It’s definitely highly traumatic, Quentin. You fucking died.”

They get into the train.

“Listen, tomorrow morning, we meet at my place and then we find a way to hypnotize you, okay?”

“I guess.”

-

They don’t make it to tomorrow morning because the train fucking derails.


	11. Chapter 11

Eliot leaves Margo’s loft as fast as possible, trying not to notice the things that are missing (the guy who gave him a joint the very first time, two frames on the wall, the bouquet of flowers).

He gets to Quentin’s building in record time and Quentin buzzes him in without even asking who it is first.

“New plan,” Eliot declares as soon as Quentin opens his door. “We probably won’t survive long enough to find someone to hypnotize you so what if I just go through your night with you? We recreate that first night, we do everything you did and then we’ll see where that goes, hm?”

Quentin sits down on the couch, seems to shrink on himself. “You don’t get it,” he says. “You get to relive your birthday party, with all of your friends. I—I relive the worst night of my life. I don’t want you to see it. To see _me_ , the way I was that night.”

Eliot sits down next to him. “Quentin. I have seen some shit. I have lived through some shit. Whatever happened that night… Well you’re not gonna shock me. And I’m not gonna judge you, I promise.” He puts a hand on Quentin’s shoulder. “Alright?”

Quentin hides his face in his hands, before letting out a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, yeah, you’re right, it might help.”

“What did you do first?”

-

The building they go to is just a tad fancier than Quentin’s. There’s a working elevator for once, but Quentin ignores it and takes the stairs.

“You said to do everything exactly like that first night,” Quentin says when Eliot groans.

Quentin stops at the second floor, in front of a white door looking like the four other doors on this landing. He inhales deeply, closing his eyes for a second, as if he’s bracing himself. Which he probably is, since he knows what’s coming.

He knocks at the door.

It opens on a petite woman with straight platinum blond hair and huge nerd glasses revealing icy cold blue eyes. She’s tiny but Eliot is already slightly terrified of her. Her face is a mask of neutrality, and if it wasn’t for her cute skater dress and even cuter heeled boots, Eliot would’ve thought she was an android, or something like that.

“Quentin,” she greets in a perfunctory way. “Who’s that?” she then asks when her glacial gaze falls on Eliot.

“Oh, I’m no one, don’t mind me,” Eliot replies with a wave of the hand.

Blondie quirks an eyebrow, but she lets them in.

“You don’t have a suitcase,” Quentin says. It sounds flat, rehearsed. Eliot realizes that maybe Quentin came back here every time before they met. That he relived this situation, as awful as it is, over and over and over again, saying the same words, probably hoping the outcome to be different. The thought is a fucking sad one.

“I think we need to talk,” Blondie—Eliot is pretty sure Quentin told him her name at some point but he can’t remember it at this very moment—says, sitting on the edge of the immaculate couch.

Her place is very neat, very white and light gray, nothing out of place, and it’s slightly freaking Eliot out. He’d much rather be back at Quentin’s place. Eliot stays out of the way, leaning against a wall near the dining table. Quentin sits on the armchair facing the couch.

“Look,” she says. “I know we’re supposed to leave tonight, but I’ve just been thinking a lot about our relationship. I mean, we’ve been together since we were basically kids and you’re kind of my best friend.” Eliot winces, but Quentin doesn’t flinch. “If I’m honest with myself,” she continues, “this isn’t what I want. I want more for my life.” She looks down at her lap, and it might be the first sign of emotion that she’s showing tonight. Eliot is almost impressed. “I want to grow up and I can’t do that with you. You’re afraid of change, you’re afraid of everything you’re not used to and worrying about you, managing you, us, our relationship, it’s becoming a—a job, Quentin. And I already have a job.”

“Really?” Eliot can’t help but interject.

She throws him a haughty look. “Yes. I’m doing a PhD in literature.”

“Wow, that is completely useless.”

Quentin seems to be sending him signals with his entire face, signals that are ranging from “what the fuck are you doing” to “shut the fuck up” and “this wasn’t the plan”, but Eliot just pretends not to see it and focuses the entirety of his attention on that bitchy little blond who’s trying to reject the blame on Quentin when she’s been fucking someone else behind his back for months. Eliot is an asshole, yes, but he still values honesty and decency. And right now, those are nowhere to be found.

“Who do you think you are?” Blondie hisses.

Eliot gets closer to them. “I think I get the picture. So you,” he says pointing at Blondie, “think you can do better. Which is interesting because I think that Quentin over here—” he gestures to Quentin, “—is way out of your league.”

He sees a tiny smile on Quentin’s face from the corner of his eye. Small victories.

“No one asked you, okay?”

“No one asked me, but at least I’m honest. Something you don’t seem to be very capable of.”

Oooh, if eyes could kill, Blondie would definitely have murdered him already. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Eliot snorts. “I’m talking about the fact that you’re trying to break up with Quentin by rejecting all the blame on him when you’re the one who’s been cheating the entire time,” he says calmly.

Blondie’s eyes widen. She turns to Quentin, agape, the angry and disdainful expression melting from her face, replaced by something akin to shame, worry and...fear? Good for her.

“Quen—”

“I think we’re done, Alice,” Quentin says. He stands up. “Let’s go, El.”

Quentin grabs Eliot’s arm and drags him to the front door. Alice watches them go, and maybe that makes him a bad person, but Eliot is viciously pleased when her face falls.

Quentin almost runs down the stairs, probably floating on the adrenaline telling his ex to fuck off gave him.

“Oh my god,” he lets out, like a cry of relief, but at the same time sounding like he doesn’t quite believe what just happened. “Wow. I didn’t think it’d feel so good.”

Eliot wraps an arm around his shoulders. “Bask in it, my friend.”

“I mean, I know she won’t remember any of this next time, but it felt so fucking good to just—” Quentin clenches his fist victoriously and Eliot huffs a laugh. Funny how they’re just thinking in terms of “next time” like it’s obvious there will be one, like it’s obvious they won’t get out of that shitty situation. “You were amazing,” Quentin says. “Thank you. I really needed that.”

“Oh I’m great at being an absolute cunt to people, so call me anytime, it’ll be my pleasure.” Quentin chuckles. They start walking, Eliot’s arm still around Quentin’s shoulders. “Where to next?”

-

They go to Hoberman’s bar.

“Watch the hatch,” Eliot says.

“Hm?” Quentin looks at him like he has no idea what Eliot is talking about.

Eliot points at the—fucking open—hatch in the side alley. “The hatch.”

“Oh, I’ve never noticed it.”

“Seriously?! This thing killed me twice!”

“That’s harsh,” Quentin says, pushing open the front door of the bar.

There’s an open spot at the end of the counter, so that’s where they settle. Quentin orders a whiskey, neat, so Eliot does the same.

“How drunk were you?”

“Super drunk. I don’t remember getting out of here.”

So they drink. Eliot remembers seeing Quentin and Julia stumbling into the bodega that first night. But he also remembers seeing them stumbling out of Hoberman’s bar, that second time he died because of the hatch. Quentin was indeed shitfaced.

So they drink. And they drink some more.

“Do you think this is a good idea?” Quentin asks after their fourth—or is it fifth?—drink. He’s slurring his words a little.

“I don’t know, but it’s the only one we have,” Eliot answers, significantly less tipsy. He’s a professional party goer, he does have training after all.

Quentin drains his glass and signals for another.

“I knew she was unhappy,” he says, looking into his empty glass like the answer to everything is at the bottom of it, drowned in a whiskey drop. “I don’t know why I thought proposing would be a good idea. Because that’s what I was gonna do. On that trip. You know.”

“Kinda got that from the ring box you were annoyingly playing with that time in the elevator.” Eliot finishes his drink as well.

The bartender puts down two full glasses in front of them.

“It disappeared,” Quentin says, taking the new glass, staring at the alcohol in it.

“What did?”

“The ring. I threw it in the East River one time. Then I got electrocuted, but when I came back, the box was empty.”

Eliot swallows a mouthful of whiskey. “Has it come back since?” he asks afterwards.

“Nope,” Quentin replies, popping the “p”. He drains half of his glass. “You’ve ever been engaged? Married?” he asks.

Eliot scrunches up his nose. “Nah. I don’t think it’s for me. I’m not made for long term romantic relationships, you know.”

Quentin nods a couple of times, looking like he’s pondering what Eliot just said. Then he bottoms up and only coughs a little afterwards.

“Not many people could go through what we are going through,” he says, slowly, meditatively almost.

“Yeah.”

They drink some more, then Quentin starts swaying on his bar stool.

“Alright,” Eliot says, slapping the counter with his hands once and then standing up. “What happened after this?”

Quentin looks up at him through cloudy eyes, then he squints, scrunches up his nose. “Uh, I don’t—I don’t—I’m trying.” He tilts his head, rubs at his face. “Uh, it’s hazy.”

Eliot sighs. “Take your time, it’s only eternity.”

“Hey, I’m trying, okay?” Quentin drunk-protests. “Why am I the only one being interrogated? You’re in this shit, too! What were you doing at that time, uh?”

Eliot looks up at the time stamp on the muted television.

“Hm. I was fucking Mike.”

Quentin rolls his eyes, his face the picture of disgust. “Ugh.”

“I know. But we recreating your night, not mine, and that’s for the best because honestly the sex was like, mediocre at best. So. Ideas?” Quentin tries to grab Eliot’s still mostly full glass. “Okay, slow down there, Bukowski is not your greatest look.”

Eliot sits back down and makes them switch to water.

“You really don’t remember?” he asks Quentin an hour into the descent into sobriety-ish.

Quentin shakes his head then groans, letting his head thump softly against the counter. “I feel like I’m already hungover and I haven’t even slept.”

“Let me guess, you’re not a huge drinker?”

“Not since college, no,” Quentin says into the wood.

Eliot snorts. The thought occurs to him that he actually has no idea what Quentin does for a living. So he asks.

Quentin turns his head just enough to side eye Eliot. “We didn’t talk about it?”

“Nope.”

“I’m a junior editor at this tiny publishing company that mostly does fantasy erotica.”

Eliot can feel his eyebrows rise up. “Fantasy erotica?”

“People want to fuck dragons, El. What can I say.”

Eliot should feel bad about how blasé Quentin seems to be about the entire thing, but the look of despair on his face mixed with the fact that he still has his head on the counter just makes him want to coo and pet his hair. In a non-creepy way. More like in the way you would coo at a puppy and pet its head. Or something. Eliot isn’t exactly sober here either.

“What about you?”

“I work at an art gallery with Margo. She’s doing all the actual business stuff, I’m just here to stroke the artists’ egos and convince rich fucks to buy the most boring shit ever.”

“Sounds rewarding.”

“I’d say as much as reading dragon fetish porn.”

Quentin laughs. For a moment, Eliot forgets that he’s stuck in a time loop. When Quentin is laughing, it’s like they’re two normal guys in their late twenties, having a drink at a bar, complaining about their jobs and almost flirting. Eliot can see it. He can see himself being into Quentin’s quiet nerdiness and clever wit. He actually likes the guy—which is rather good news since they’re stuck together for the foreseeable (non) future.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Better. I think I can walk on my own. Kinda. I think I couldn’t, that first night,” he muses. “I called Julia.”

Eliot runs his finger along the rim of his glass. “I saw you twice, before we met in the elevator,” he says idly.

Quentin’s head snaps up. “You did?”

“The first night. I was at the bodega with Him-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and you and Julia came in. I mean, Julia came in, with you as a dead weight hanging off of her.”

Quentin blinks a couple of times. “She told me to wait in the back room...” he says, unsure.

“And you almost destroyed an entire shelf of tomato sauce jars on the way. At least I think it was tomato sauce.”

Quentin’s eyes glaze over, like he’s seeing another scene entirely playing before him. “I don’t remember seeing you.”

Eliot shrugs. “I didn’t think you would. You were pretty fucking plastered.”

Quentin snorts. “What was the second time?” he asks.

“I came here to yell at Hoberman about his special joint because I thought that was the cause of it all and that I was hallucinating big time. You and Julia came out of here and I fell in the hatch and died.”

“Typical,” Quentin says dryly, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Hey, I think that’s the time I tripped on the sidewalk just outside and broke my neck.”

Eliot barks a laugh. “I guess for us it is typical, uh?” He nudges Quentin’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

The cold sharp wind helps them sober up even more quickly.

“Where to?” Quentin asks. “The bodega?”

Eliot buttons up his coat all the way up, trying to keep the wind from slithering its way to his neck. “Fuck, it’s cold. Do you remember where you went after the bodega backroom?”

Quentin blows on his hands. “I’m not sure, but my guess is that Jules would’ve brought me home?”

“Let’s go home then.”

-

The warmth of Quentin’s apartment is more than welcome after the biting cold.

“I’m making coffee,” Eliot declares before even removing his coat.

“Make yourself at home, I guess,” Quentin says, gesturing vaguely toward the kitchen.

Eliot ends up making hot cocoa—the proper way, with real milk warmed up in a pan, and chocolate and cinnamon because fuck those heathens who use water heated up in a fucking microwave.

Quentin makes a surprised but pleased noise when Eliot comes back in the living room and thrusts a mug under his nose. “What happened to coffee?”

Eliot sits down on the couch next to him, clutching at his own mug for some much needed warmth. “I saw you had stuff to make this so I thought why not, you did tell me to make myself at home after all.”

Quentin smiles. Eliot likes making him smile. It’s such a change from the anxious wreck he was those first few times. Quentin curls up on his side, legs folded under him, letting his head lean against the back of the couch.

“The advantage of reliving this night over and over again,” he starts, softly, his eyes fixing a point on the expanse of the couch between them, “is that I’m gonna be over the break up in record time, once time gets working normally again. It’s going to freak everyone out.”

He looks up at Eliot and Eliot is almost wary to understand what he sees in Quentin’s eyes. Excitement, for one, some nervousness—but that might be just Quentin’s natural state—and what could maybe be desire?

Eliot swallows. “Really?” he says, his voice a bit strained.

Quentin nods and shuffles ever so slightly closer to Eliot, his gaze falling to Eliot’s lips. Eliot can’t help but lick them, extremely self-conscious of doing so, but the reflex is here and he can’t fight it.

“Can I—” Quentin trails off.

“Yes,” Eliot all but breathes before Quentin’s lips are on his own. The kiss is brief, not chaste by any means, but far from filthy. It takes Eliot a few seconds after it’s over to open his eyes again.

Quentin is smiling up at him, looking content and peaceful, so Eliot takes their mugs and sets them down on the coffee table next to them before sliding his hand against Quentin’s neck and reeling him in for another kiss, this one closer to filthy. Quentin goes easily, slotting himself against him, then apparently deciding it’s not enough and straddling Eliot’s hips and burying his hands in Eliot’s hair. It takes a lot of self control for Eliot not to grind his hips up against Quentin’s, but Quentin doesn’t have that restrain, clearly looking for friction while thoroughly devouring Eliot’s mouth. Eliot slides his hands under Quentin’s sweater, feeling the skin underneath, brushing against his stomach before grabbing his hips, his thumbs slotting in the dips like they belong there.

“Bed?” Quentin gasps when Eliot nips at his lower lip.

Eliot is panting hard and one part of him desires nothing more than taking Quentin to bed and making him see stars, but another part is reminding him that Quentin was far from sober not too long ago, drunk on too much alcohol and emotions.

He rests his head against Quentin’s collarbone, trying to cool down a bit.

“I’d love nothing more,” he says. “But maybe that should wait until we’re both a hundred percent sober, you know?”

Quentin’s body seems to deflate, some tension leaving him. “You’re right.”

“I’m old and wise,” Eliot jokes and he feels more than he hears Quentin huffing a laugh.

“Will you stay the night anyway?” Quentin asks.

Eliot steals a much more PG-rated kiss. “Sure,” he replies against Quentin’s lips. “Ask me again about sex tomorrow,” he adds suggestively.

Quentin deepens the kiss and Eliot has to do his best not to fuck him right here and there on the couch.

They do end up in Quentin’s bed after another thorough making out session. It’s comfortable, but what is even more comfortable is having Quentin snuggled up against him. Never in a million years would Eliot have called himself a cuddler, a snuggler, or any other lovey-dovey cutesie name. Up until that point, he was very much a fuck and get up kind of guy. But here, now, in this mindfucking situation that is his current life, it’s fine. It’s pretty awesome, even. He falls asleep with Quentin’s hair in his face and he’s not even bothered by it, instead looking forward to the morning and what might very well happen then.

-

The morning doesn’t happen.

The morning doesn’t happen because Eliot wakes up in the night needing to pee like hell and slips on the bathroom floor and smashes his head open against the bathtub edge.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for this chapter: there's a suicide mention. it starts after "cupping Quentin's cheek" and goes on until "Quentin looks up at him."  
> there's nothing terribly graphic and it isn't discussed in much details, but well, if that's an issue for you, please take care of yourself.

He leaves Margo’s party, and literally runs all the way to Quentin’s apartment. Quentin barely opens his door before he’s hauling Eliot inside by the lapel of his coat, kissing him like his life depends on it—and maybe it does, who the fuck knows?

“I’m really fucking sober,” he says against Eliot’s lips.

Eliot chuckles and kisses him back eagerly, divesting himself of his coat while Quentin is pulling him to the couch. Quentin lowers himself backward, still grabbing and kissing Eliot who has no option but to crawl on top of him blindly.

“What—happened?” Quentin asks breathlessly when Eliot moves his attention from his lips to his neck.

“Fell in your bathroom,” Eliot replies against his skin.

Quentin gasps when Eliot sucks on his earlobe, clenching his hand in Eliot's hair in a way that sends shivers down Eliot's back and straight to his dick. Eliot diverts his attention from Quentin's skin to his clothes, sliding his hand under his sweater and his t-shirt, pulling at them until Quentin gets the memo and lifts his arms enough to remove them entirely. The pants take a bit longer as Eliot is suddenly very distracted by the expanse of skin in front of him, the smooth stomach and the hardened nipples nested in dark hairs.

“Fuck,” Quentin pants, his hands once more buried in Eliot's hair as Eliot explores his naked chest with his tongue and his lips like it's the most important job in the world.

“That's the idea,” Eliot says, trying to sound smug, but his voice just sounds breathless and desperate for more.

“Clothes,” Quentin just replies, moving his hands from Eliot's hair to his shirt. “Come on.”

Eliot wishes he could be dramatic and just rips his shirt open without giving a fuck about popping buttons and seams, but it is a very nice shirt and Margo gifted it to him. Who knows if this time is the time nothing resets and they get out of that mess? So he takes the time to undo all of the buttons, straddling Quentin's hips and grinding down until Quentin's eyes are completely taken over by lust and desire.

“Keep that up and this won't last long,” Quentin warns, breathing hard.

Eliot leans down. “We have all night,” he says against Quentin's lips. “And as much as I'd like to fuck you on that couch, I remember your bed being quite comfortable.”

“Uh-uh,” Quentin replies eloquently, wrapping a leg around one of Eliot's, clearly seeking more friction.

Eliot chuckles. “This isn't helping.”

Quentin almost whines when Eliot moves away from him and stands up, but whatever complaints he had seem to disappear when Eliot starts removing his pants as he's slowly walking to the bedroom.

“Come on,” Eliot says in the bedroom threshold, only clad in his boxer briefs. “Or I'm starting without you.”

That makes Quentin move and they're soon both naked and lying down on his bed, exploring, tasting, sucking and licking every inch of skin they can reach while having as little distance between them as possible.

“Condoms and lube?” Eliot asks, his hand around Quentin's dick.

Quentin stretches out to the other side of the bed, rummages around the bedside drawer and drops a bottle of lube and a handful of condoms next to them.

Eliot raises his eyebrows. “Someone's ambitious.”

Quentin pushes at Eliot’s chest until he’s flat on his back and straddles his hips. “I was a bit preoccupied by your hand on my dick to count them, asshole.”

Eliot laughs and slides a hand to Quentin’s neck, pulling him down and kissing him deep and filthy.

“It’s okay,” he says, “I have plans for you.”

-

Afterwards, when they’re both exhausted and content and spent and sticky, Quentin rolls on his stomach, crossing his arms over Eliot’s chest and resting his chin on top of them, looking at Eliot with a smile.

“What?” Eliot asks when Quentin doesn’t say anything.

Quentin huffs a small laugh. “Was it worth getting stuck in a time loop?”

Eliot snorts and rolls his eyes, smiling despite the absurdity of the situation. “Absolutely,” he answers, wrapping an arm around Quentin’s waist, tracing patterns against his skin.

And it’s true. He’s glad he met Quentin, and not only because the sex was phenomenal.

They take a shower that becomes round...something—Eliot is not counting—even though Quentin warns that it could lead to their deaths. Eliot is more than ready to take the risk.

They fall asleep wrapped in each other and if he has a heart attack in his sleep, if there’s a sudden earthquake and the building collapse or if they’re victims of a serial killer in the night, well, they’ll always have next time to get breakfast together.

-

Eliot is woken up by a punch in the face. The pain irradiating his face instantaneously makes him go from deep into slumber to wide awake. Next to him, Quentin is thrashing around, clearly in the middle of a nightmare.

“Quentin, wake up,” Eliot tries, sitting up and shoving gently at Quentin’s shoulder.

Quentin only groans and whines in his sleep. Eliot tries to take him into his arms to sooth him if he can’t wake him up, but Quentin immediately flails, trying to get away from him, breathing erratically. Eliot truly does not want to know what the fuck that nightmare is about.

“Quentin,” he calls again, in his softest voice. “Quentin, come on, you’re alright.”

It still doesn’t work. Eliot tries to shake him again. Quentin struggles against him, and his eyes snap open, but they’re not focused, they’re still in the nightmare, not seeing Eliot or the room or anything from the real world. He’s in full panic mode and Eliot is afraid to hurt him, but he’s also afraid he’ll hurt himself. Quentin shoves him away with more force than Eliot expects. He falls backward and the edge of the bedside table meets the back of his neck brutally.

-

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom.

The mirror isn’t there anymore.

Eliot feels himself shaking all over, the memory of his death too fresh for his own good. He wonders what was the cause of Quentin’s death then. Given his agitation, maybe a heart attack. Or another asthma attack.

He shuts off the faucet and leaves the bathroom. The loft is almost empty.

“Where did it go?” he asks before Margo can wish him a happy birthday.

“Where did what go?” Margo says, adding the finishing touches to the birthday cake.

“The mirror. In the bathroom.”

Margo snorts. “There’s never been a mirror in the bathroom, baby.”

It’s too much.

Eliot leaves through the fire escape. He thinks distantly that maybe the stairs are safe again, but he’s not ready to die again to find that something else as disappeared.

-

He smashes Quentin’s buzzer.

“Quentin, it’s me. Come on, let me in.”

The door stays closed.

“Quentin, come on! Please!”

There’s a pause, but the door does open.

Quentin is in the threshold of his apartment when Eliot gets to his landing.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” Quentin says, cautiously.

“I don’t care.”

“I killed you.” Quentin’s voice breaks.

Eliot takes him in his arms. “Let’s go in, alright,” he says, then drops a kiss on top of Quentin’s head.

They sit on the couch, further apart than what Eliot would like, but Quentin looks like he could break at any moment.

“The mirror in Margo’s bathroom disappeared,” Eliot says because he feels like he needs to say something.

“Mine, too,” Quentin mumbles, keeping his eyes downcast.

They stay silent for a few seconds before Eliot can’t take it anymore. “Alright, this is ridiculous. This is not on you, Quentin. This is this bullshit universe fucking with us,” he exclaims, scooting closer to Quentin.

“I killed you, El,” Quentin repeats.

“You were having a night terror slash panic attack. You didn’t do it on purpose. I’m not mad at you, Quentin.”

Quentin nods slightly. “Could you call me Q,” he says in a small voice. “Only Alice called me Quentin,” he adds, glancing up.

Eliot puts a tentative hand on Quentin’s forearm. “Of course.”

Quentin takes his hand, lacing their fingers together. “It wasn’t a nightmare,” he says, looking at their hands. “I remembered my first death.”

His grip on Eliot’s hand is almost painful, but Eliot doesn’t mention it. Instead he waits to see if Quentin is going to tell him what happened on that first night. When he doesn’t, Eliot reaches up with his free hand, cupping Quentin’s cheek.

“Q,” he says softly and Quentin immediately meets his eyes. “What happened?”

“I—I killed myself,” Quentin says, his voice barely above a whisper, cracking in the middle. Eliot tugs at him and Quentin goes easily, slotting himself against Eliot’s chest, crying into his shirt. “I threw myself off the top of the building,” he adds, sobbing between the words.

Eliot holds him and waits.

“I definitely started this whole thing,” Quentin says once he’s calmer, his breathing not as laborious as before. “You said my first death was the only unknown factor, but now we know. I killed myself. I did this to us. To you.”

“Q, Q, stop. Your first death doesn’t explain why or how we’re connected. I mean I saw you at the bodega when you were drunk, and I thought “this guy needs some help” but then Julia said you were gonna be alright and I went and fucked Mike instead.” Quentin sighs against him. “Maybe if I hadn’t and if I had helped you, you wouldn’t have killed yourself. So maybe, just maybe, this is on me.”

Quentin looks up at him. “Maybe if I hadn’t gotten so drunk, I would’ve prevented you from getting hit by that car. See, that could still be on me.”

“Okay let’s not play the Blame Olympics, here.”

“This is literally what might help us get out of this, El.”

Eliot sighs and readjusts his hold on Quentin. He puts his chin on top of his head. “Either way, the loop started because we didn’t help each other. I guess.”

“I knew we were being punished,” Quentin mumbles.

“I still maintain that this is not Purgatory,” Eliot protests without much heat.

Quentin burrows into his chest. “So what should we do?”

Eliot slumps a bit more, until he’s almost lying down with Quentin sprawled on top of him.

“If not helping each other is what created the loop, I guess we have to find a way to go back to that moment and rewrite it? Or something?”

“How? Things keep disappearing. And with all that we know, we’re never gonna be able to recreate that moment at the bodega. I mean. I don’t want to face Alice one more fucking time. Do you want to fuck Mike again?”

“Ugh, God no.” Eliot suddenly wants a cigarette. “But maybe it is the only way.”

“Fuck,” Quentin groans.

Eliot chuckles. “We could.”

It makes Quentin laugh and honestly, that’s all Eliot wants right now. “Not right now,” Quentin says. “I’m tired.”

Eliot pets Quentin’s hair. “Let’s sleep then.”


	13. Chapter 13

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom, only this time he doesn’t remember dying.

Aneurysm, maybe? Carbon monoxide intoxication? Who knows, there’s a lot of silent killers in this world.

There’s no mirror. No one to pound against the door. At this point, the loft is almost completely empty.

“Happy birthday, baby,” Margo says to him, unperturbed by how few people there is, by the fact that her walls are bare, that there’s music but no one singing on it. She’s just Margo, his Margo, smoking a joint and celebrating his birthday.

A terrible thought occurs to Eliot. One of these times, Margo will disappear too. She’ll disappear like the fish, like Quentin’s rabbit, like the people at that party. Something like ice surrounds his heart and he feels like crying and screaming at the same time. He can’t lose Margo.

“I need you to come with me,” he says as he grabs his coat from the hanger.

“What? Where?”

“To the bodega. I’m meeting a guy there. We gotta find Fen, too.”

“El, I’m not going anywhere. I live here. This is our party,” she tells him slowly, like he’s too high to understand things normally. “Fen,” she calls when Fen approaches. “Help me with this.”

“What’s going on? Are you leaving?” Fen asks when she sees his coat in his hands.

“No one’s leaving,” Margo says, sternly.

“Listen,” Eliot cuts. “I love you both so, so, so fucking much, okay? I can’t be the reason you stop existing, I’d never forgive myself.”

“Okay,” Fen says.

“Fuck off,” Margo groans at the same time.

They look at each other. Fen raises her eyebrows, Margo glares, but something must be communicated somehow, because Margo ends up rolling her eyes.

“Fine. But we’re coming right back.”

“Splendid. But we have to take the fire escape.”

“Great!” Fen says, always a ray of sunshine.

“Fuck me,” Margo just mutters.

Margo complains the entire time they’re going down the fire escape but they get to the street with everyone alive.

“Alright, where’s the bodega?”

Eliot lifts up the lapel of his coat in a useless effort to protect his neck from the wind. He starts walking.

“The one next to my place.”

Margo groans, but she and Fen follow.

“Do you feel weird?” Eliot asks. “Like you haven’t been outside in a long, very long time?”

He glances to the side. They’re both looking at him like he just lost his mind. Which, okay, fair.

He looks back to the street in front of him and stops dead in his tracks. There’s a kid a few yards away, watching him, expressionless, motionless. He’s wearing old jeans too big for him, with only an oversized purple t-shirt despite the biting cold of the night. His hair is long, his locks tangled and dirty, as dark as the circle beneath his eyes. People walk past him like they don’t even see him.

Eliot knows that kid. He’s seen him in the mirror most of his life.

“Eliot?” Fen is calling.

“What’s wrong?” Margo asks.

“Do you see that?” Eliot says, his voice weak and afraid, not daring to take his eyes away from the kid.

Margo turns to the street. “See what, El?”

Before Eliot can explain however, a sharp pain stabs him in the chest, taking away his ability to breathe, to talk, to stay upright. He grasps at his torso and the girls immediately take action, Margo trying to get him to sit down on the sidewalk, Fen taking out her cellphone and dialing 911. He can feel them panic, and Margo is talking to him, close to begging him to hold on, and Fen says that help is on its way and he’s going to be fine, and people surrounding them, watching the scene with morbid curiosity.

Eliot keeps still staring at the kid, who watches him die without any emotion crossing his face.

-

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom.

He wonders if Quentin is hallucinating his younger self too.

He marches across the almost empty apartment.

“Happy birth—”

He grabs Margo and pulls her to the fire escape.

“Come on. We gotta go.”

“The fuck? Where?”

“To the bodega.”

“But I don’t need anything from the bodega.”

“I don’t care,” Eliot says not slowing down despite Margo’s protest. He sees Fen. “Fire escape, now.”

Fen shrugs and comes, because she’s Fen and she’s perfect.

They get to the street and Eliot doesn’t wait for them to catch up. He walks, hearing them behind him, until he gets to the spot where he saw the kid (he refuses to say that it is actually his younger self because that’s just nuts and he’s already pretty high on the fucked up scale).

“Why are we stopping?” Fen asks.

Eliot scrutinizes the street, looking for the purple t-shirt, or the dirty hair. Nothing.

“Alright. Coast is clear, let’s go.”

He hurries to the bodega, Margo and Fen trailing after him. When he gets there, there’s no one behind the counter, the fruits in display are rotten and half the shelves are empty.

Quentin is here, though.

“What’s happening?” he asks Eliot, then upon noticing the girls, “Hey, Margo, Fen.”

“...hey,” Margo replies slowly like she’s wondering who the fuck that is and how he knows her name.

“Hi?” Fen says. “Who is that?” she asks Margo in a low voice.

“Fuck if I know,” is the answer.

Eliot tries to ignore them.

“I died in bed. Aneurysm I guess. Then a heart attack on the sidewalk. You?”

“Same in bed. And then something that felt like internal bleeding.”

Eliot frowns. “I kinda want to ask how you know how internal bleeding feels enough to recognize it on the spot, but we don’t have the time for that.”

“Why did you bring them?” Quentin asks, nodding toward Margo and Fen who are perusing the shelves, a bit further away from them.

“People keep disappearing. I can’t have them disappearing too.”

“Shit. Maybe that’s why Julia’s not here. Wait, what does that mean disappearing, you think? Are they erased from existence?”

Quentin is saying something else, but Eliot isn’t hearing him anymore.

The kid is near the fresh products shelves. He stares at Eliot then walks toward the back of the shop.

“I don’t know,” Eliot says, looking at the spot where the kid was. He doesn’t know what he’s replying to, but it seems like the appropriate answer to everything in his life. He doesn’t know. He just doesn’t. 

“Are you okay?” Quentin asks.

Eliot feels more than he sees Margo and Fen coming back to them, probably alerted by Quentin’s question.

Margo sighs. “What’s going on?” She sounds irritated and annoyed and not pleased at all about being at the bodega when she could be at her party, even if that party counts less than ten people at this very moment.

“How do you know Eliot?” Fen asks Quentin, who just splutters.

It all happens in the background for Eliot, though. He’s still staring at the back of the shop, walking slowly towards it, waiting for the kid to reappear.

“Something’s wrong,” Margo’s voice says far away from him.

Quentin appears in his line of vision. “Eliot, you’re bleeding.”

Eliot tears his eyes away from the spot. “I’m seeing things,” he whispers, feeling blood coming out of his nose and into his mouth.

“Should we go to the hospital?” Fen says, panic edging into her voice. Margo says something too, but Eliot doesn’t understand it. He feels like he’s underwater, all the sounds and physical sensations muffled and muted.

“Q, we’re dying again,” he says, but he doesn’t hear his own voice. His legs fold under him and the only reason he doesn’t collapse on the cold tiles is because Quentin is here to take on his weight. “Are you dying?” he asks against Quentin’s chest.

Sound rumbles under his ear, but he doesn’t understand the words. His body isn’t his anymore, wrecked by spasms so painful it feels like being electrocuted.

-

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom.

But there’s no muffled music coming from the living room.

There’s no door either.

There’s just the loft, empty of people, empty of furniture, and Margo, dancing to a non-existing tune in the middle of it.

“Happy birthday, baby!” she says, swaying.

“There’s nobody here,” Eliot says, flatly. He’s tired. He’s so tired. “There’s no party.”

“I am the party,” she whispers, smoking her joint.

“We’re in an empty loft. There’s nothing here.”

Margo looks at him, clearly high as a kite, smiling. She keeps dancing in the silence.

This is not the real Margo. This is a projection of his mind, this is the universe collapsing.

“I gotta fix this,” he says to her even if she doesn’t understand it. She just smiles at him, nodding, dancing slowly. “Come with me,” he asks, begs, feeling tears rolling down his cheeks.

Margo stops dancing. She approaches him, caresses his cheek. Her expression is now much more serious.

“I can’t,” she says, looking sober and grave.

Then the smile comes back, and she starts swaying again, smoking her joint and dancing away from him.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another mention of suicide in this chapter, very brief, happening between "hit by a car" and "eliot stands up"

He goes to Quentin’s place.

The furniture is gone here too, but Quentin isn't and is hugging him tight.

“The universe is falling apart,” Eliot says.

“I know,” Quentin mumbles against his chest.

“Did you see a young version of you?”

Quentin steps back, just enough so they can still touch, but far away so that he can look at Eliot in the eyes without killing his neck in the process.

“What do you mean?”

“Another you. But young.”

“Like a hallucination?”

“Like a hallucination.”

Quentin frowns, shakes his head. “No. Did you?”

“Yes. It’s what made me die the last two times. I see him—me—and then I die.”

“Seeing your younger self makes you die?” Quentin repeats, sounding dumfounded.

“We’re stuck in a time loop where shit is disappearing at every new loop, but you find me hallucinating the kid version of me and dying because of it weird?”

Quentin sighs. “Fair.” He sits on the floor. “What do we do?”

Eliot does the same. “I don’t know. But it must mean something that I see my younger self, right? Like maybe it’s a clue.”

Quentin folds a leg under him and turns to Eliot. He pushes his hair behind his ear, in a way that has come to mean ‘Quentin is thinking’ to Eliot.

“Do you remember what was happening when you were that age?”

Eliot leans back, looks up at the ceiling. He swallows around the knot in his throat. “Yeah,” he says. “At that time, things with my mom were...bad.” He glances at Quentin. “Remember Henry’s story with the mirror?” Quentin nods. “Yeah, that was nothing compared to the shit she was doing then. That’s also when I did something awful to her.”

“Maybe you should try to make that right?”

Eliot scoffs. “Yeah, Q, I can’t do that. She’s dead. I don’t know how to make things right.”

Quentin lies down on the floor, eyes on the ceiling. Eliot takes a cigarette out of his pack and lights it, staring at the smoke. It feels like the only thing they have left to do is stay here and wait for what’s left of the universe to vanish around them.

Eliot has finished his cigarette and is debating smoking another one when Quentin frowns, then inhales deeply and sits up. “I do,” he says, deadly serious.

“What?”

Quentin stands up and goes to grab his jacket. “I know how to make things right, at least on my end. You should try and do the same.”

Eliot feels like he just got suckerpunched. “What? What the fuck, Q, you can’t leave!”

“I have to. It’s the mistakes from both of us that got us here, and I know how to deal with mine.”

Quentin slips on his jacket and goes to the door. Something a lot feeling a lot like terror twists Eliot’s guts.

“Well, I don’t!” he yells.

“You’ll figure it out, El,” Quentin says, not bothering to turn around.

“So you’re just leaving me like that? Fuck you,” Eliot spits.

Quentin turns back to him. “That might be the last thing you say to me.” Eliot gives him an incredulous look. “Seriously,” Quentin says. “This time, when we die, we might not come back.”

“Maybe I’ll kill myself just to fuck you over,” Eliot says and he knows he’s being ridiculous and petulant like a fucking child, but he’s scared, okay? He doesn’t want to be alone. What if they die and he comes back but not Quentin? What if he ends up stuck in the loop, condemned to die over and over again, always coming back but utterly alone in a vanishing city?

Quentin shrugs, smiling a bit self consciously. “Well, that’s what I did and look where it got us.” Eliot rolls his eyes. “You’re the most selfish person I’ve ever met,” Quentin says. “And it changed my life. So thank you, I guess.”

And then he leaves.

-

So Eliot does the only thing he can think of.

He goes to Henry’s.

“Eliot? Are you okay?” Henry asks as soon as he opens the door.

Eliot gets into the house, feeling febrile and shaky and just that close to completely and utterly losing it.

“I did something terrible,” is what he says, raking his fingers through his curls and looking everywhere but in Henry’s direction.

“Let’s sit down.” Henry takes him gently by the arm and leads him to the living room. “Talk to me,” he says as he sits down.

“I need to tell you,” Eliot starts while he shrugs off his coat and throws it on the armrest. “Before this whole thing is over, that—that I killed her. I killed Mom. I abandoned her. I took the easy way out,” he finishes, sitting down heavily on the couch.

Henry frowns. “What easy way out?”

Eliot takes a deep breath. “I told the social worker that I wanted to live with you and not with her. And it killed her.”

“Eliot.”

“I killed her.”

“Eliot, I don’t know what you remember, but you are wrong. You said you wanted to live with her, just like she told you to. But it didn’t matter. It was too dangerous for you to stay there. No one with a lick of common sense was going to let that continue.”

Eliot wants a fucking drink. “I don’t think it matters.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Whatever I  _ said _ , I wanted to live with you. I wanted to get out of there,” Eliot insists.

Henry sighs. He looks like he wants a fucking drink too. “Listen to me. You were a kid, buried in darkness, fighting your way toward the light. You wanted to live, Eliot. And I might be a cynical old bastard, but I think it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.” He pauses, searches Eliot’s eyes. “Do you still have that in you?”

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? Eliot can’t answer. His eyes shift around the room, running away from Henry’s knowing gaze.

“Eliot,” Henry says and his voice sounds like it’s cracking but it can’t, it’s Henry, and Henry doesn’t have emotions strong enough to make his voice crack. “I see you now, chasing death at every corner and I wonder, where is that piece of you that wanted to light up and take over the world?”

Eliot looks down at his hands. He tries to repress the tears rising up and burning his eyes, only for them to roll down his cheeks.

“I’m gonna make us some tea,” he hears Henry say, but the sounds are coming to him as if he’s behind a wall of cotton balls.

Henry goes to the kitchen and Eliot just stays on the couch, waiting for the inevitable moment where the gas leak will make the entire house explode.

Except it doesn’t happen.

The kettle whistles and then Henry comes back with a tray.

“I don’t know why I’m alive,” Eliot mutters.

“Your life force is strong,” Henry says. “I don’t know how you survived all these years, but it worked.”

“Fillory!” Eliot exclaims, snapping out of his daze.

“What?”

“The book!  _ Fillory and Further _ !”

Eliot stands up and runs up the stairs to his old room, marching to the box containing his old things. The book is here, waiting for him to pick it up again. This book saved his life so many times, and it might be a weird thing to think, but maybe it can do it again. He is stuck in a time loop after all, how strange would it be if the solution to his problems was a book?

Henry is still in the living room when he comes back down.

“Are you going to drink your tea?” Henry asks like he already knows the answer.

“Next time,” Eliot says, grabbing his coat off the couch. “I need to do something first.”

-

Eliot goes home, starting to read the book in the subway, keeping on reading as he’s walking down the street. He probably shouldn’t, probably should look at where he’s going, but at this moment, he feels like he can’t die. He has the book. He has the book so he can’t die, because the book is the solution, it has to be. 

He remembers Quentin saying “I love this book” when he talked about it at the party at some point. Maybe that’s their only link, beside the bodega. 

He gets home and sprawls on his bed, still reading. 

And sure enough, there she is, jumping at him as he turns a page. The Watcherwoman. The mistress of the clocks. In the book, she’s playing with time, messing with the Chatwins’ adventures and terrifying the kids, appearing as the Boogeyman of Fillory. 

She controls time. It has to be connected.

Eliot snaps the book shut. He needs to talk to Quentin.

-

He doesn’t make it to Quentin’s apartment. He’s halfway there, when he passes by a woman in a red coat sitting on a bench. She smiles at him like she knows him. Eliot stops dead in his tracks. 

“Do I know you?” he asks her. 

Her smile gets bigger. “I sure hope you do,” she says in a posh English accent.

Eliot knows that accent. He knows that red coat. “You were walking your dog,” he says, his eyes not once leaving her face, studying her. It’s hard to give her an age. Her red hair is in a rather retro-looking updo, with loose strands around her face, but her face is smooth and plump. Her grey blue eyes, however, look like they’re holding centuries of knowledge and secrets. 

“I was,” she agrees. 

“So you remember the loops?”

“I do.”

Eliot sits down next to her, leaning his elbows on his knees, rubbing at his face.

“I thought it was just Quentin and me,” he says, tiredness overcoming his entire body. 

The woman laughs delicately, an elegant, crystal sounding laugh. “Oh, Eliot, darling. It is.”

He turns his head sharply to her. “Wait, how do you know my name? What the fuck is going on?” Again that smile, knowing and secretive. “Are you—are you the one doing this?!”

The smile turns satisfied and her eyes crinkle at the corner. “I knew you were smart.”

“Why?”

“Why are you smart?” she asks, mischievous. 

Eliot rolls his eyes. “You know that’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking you why the time loop? Why Quentin and me? Why tell me now?”

“Right,” she says, suddenly more serious. “I suppose it’s only fair to tell you.” She observes the people passing by for a few seconds before turning back towards him. “You have to know, I don’t make a habit of messing with people’s lives, not anymore,” she says, smoothing down the bottom of her coat. “But when I saw you, both of you, that night, I knew something had to be done. I could see what was going to happen, you see.”

“You knew I was gonna get hit by a car?”

“Yes. And, before you ask, I also knew that Quentin was going to jump off his building.”

Eliot stands up. “People die every day, though. Why us?!” he exclaims, running his hands in his hair.

“You were intrigued by him,” the woman says, undisturbed by his temper. “Right from the start.”

“How do you know?”

“I was there, remember? Quite a coincidence, actually. I had run out of tea and couldn’t sleep.”

Eliot tries to remember the first night. Meeting Blond Guy—Mike at the party and making out with him at the loft, then down the street and walking to his place. Stopping at the bodega. Penny wasn’t there but then Julia was, holding Quentin up. Quentin almost making jars fall down and the ruckus alerting a woman. In the tea aisle.

“You were there,” Eliot says, softly. He sits back down. “You did this.”

“I did.”

“I get the saving us from our first death part,” he says. “But why the time loops? Why make people disappear?”

The woman shrugs. “Saving you that first time was all nice and dandy, but it would’ve ultimately been useless if you weren’t changing your lives. You would have died of an overdose or another freak accident in a couple of months and Quentin would have been swallowed by his depression and anxiety. I gave you the opportunity to be more.”

Eliot sighs. He takes a cigarette from his pocket, lights it. “What made you decide to reveal yourself to me now?”

“You’ve made peace with your past,” she says, looking at the street.

Eliot snorts. “That’s what you call it? Being killed by hallucinations?”

“Quentin made his peace with Alice,” she continues like he hasn’t spoken.

“Is that what he left me to do?”

“And you have discovered who I am,” she finishes. Eliot frowns. She glances at him and smirks. “What were you going to do before you saw me?”

“I—I was going to Q’s place. To show him the book. The Watcherwoman—you—what? I was right? What the fuck?!”

The woman snorts. “What a terrible nickname, don’t you think? I go by Eliza these days.”

“But—But you’re a book character!”

The woman—Eliza—raises a sardonic eyebrow. “So you’re perfectly fine living through time loops, but the fact that I appear in a book is too much for you?”

Eliot exhales a plume of smoke. “Perfectly fine might be pushing it a bit.” 

Eliza shrugs. 

“What now?” Eliot asks. 


	15. Chapter 15

He’s back in Margo’s bathroom.

So is the mirror.

He slowly raises a hand to his face. He can see in his reflection that there’s no blood coming out of his nose or his eyes, but he can still feel it, warm and tacky on his skin, Eliza saying “I’m sorry, it’s the last time, I promise” softly next to him as he was dying on the bench.

He startles as someone starts pounding on the door. He shuts the water off.

When he opens the door, it’s the same girl behind it. He looks at her and she frowns at him before shutting the door in his face.

The music is back.

The people are, too. 

There’s more than two fish in the tank.

He catches a glimpse of Fen, dancing with a girl and the living room is once more a mass of people chatting, swaying to the music that is almost inaudible over people’s voices and laughter, drinking and smoking. People say hi to him and he smiles, and compliments someone on their hair, their jacket, their new boyfriend. Someone offers him a joint and he takes it. Someone hugs him and they part with the promise of seeing each other more and it’s exactly the way it was the very first time. 

Which means he has to go find Q.

He emerges from the sea of people.

“Happy birthday, baby,” Margo says, blowing out the smoke from the joint she’s holding delicately between her fingers.

Eliot rushes to her and kisses her and she goes easily, laughing and smiling.

“I love you so so so fucking much, Bambi.”

“I take it you like your party?”

“I do. I really do, but I gotta go.”

The laughter disappears from her face. “What the fuck?”

“I’m coming back, but right now I have to go see Q.”

“Oh right, Q, of course,” she says lightly. “And who, pray the fuck tell, is Q?” she adds in a very much more pissed off voice.

“It’s a long story, but I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t super important, alright?” He takes his coat from the hanger.

Margo rounds the kitchen island and plants herself in front of him. “No. You can’t leave. This is your party, El. I did all of this for you.”

“I’m sorry. I love you.”

He tries to get to the stairs, but Margo is quicker, grabbing a glass from the counter and throwing its content to his face.

He stares at her for a few seconds, alcohol dripping from his hair, spreading on his shirt, before he bursts out laughing. His Margo is back. His Margo is back and she’s glorious. She starts laughing with him too, bending over and holding on to his arm. 

“How about we find you one of the shirts you left here and then you can go find your Q?” she says. 

He nods.

She drags him to her bedroom. 

“Once you’re done,” she says as she’s going through a drawer of her dresser while he’s patting his curls with a towel, “you’re gonna have to tell me all about it.”

She holds out a shirt for him. “I wouldn’t dare not to,” he replies as he takes it. 

She watches him change with an inquisitive angle to her eyebrows. “He must be real cute if you’re ready to ditch me for him.”

Eliot grins as he’s doing the buttons but he doesn’t say anything. Margo huffs a laugh. 

-

Eliot can’t go down the stairs. 

He can remember all five times he died there and he can’t take that risk, not now. Eliza said it was the last time and he can’t fuck it up. He needs to get to Quentin. 

“El. What’s wrong?” Margo asks next to him where he’s frozen at the top of the stairs.

“Bambi. I can’t go down those fucking stairs,” he says, petrified and staring at the traitorous steps. “I swear I’m going to die if I do.”

Margo rolls her eyes. “You’re gonna be fine. Come on. Ovary up.”

Eliot doesn’t move.

Margo sighs. “El, take my hand.” She holds up her hand. “Come on. Take it.” Eliot does. “Let’s go down together, yeah?” He nods weakly. 

His heart is beating like mad in his chest, but they get down a step, and another, and another. His fingers are stiff around Margo’s, but she doesn’t complain, she just keeps going down the stairs with him until they’re on the ground floor.

“You’re gonna be okay?” she asks him.

“I hope so.”

She kisses him. “Come back soon, okay?”

“I’ll try.”

He checks his phone, tries to remember the time where they recreated Quentin’s night. He should be at home right now. Maybe. Hopefully.

He all but runs to Quentin’s building. The door is closed and there’s no answer to the buzzer, no matter how forcefully he pushes it. 

“Fucking great,” he sighs. 

He lights a cigarette. Next place was Alice’s. He really doesn’t want to see the icy blond again, but it’s not like he has a fuckton of choice, right?

He walks quickly to her building, slipping inside as someone leaves. The doors still look identical. He hopes he gets the right one and knocks. 

The door opens to an expressionless Alice, who seizes him up and raises an eyebrow.

“Can I help you?” she asks coldly.

“Hi, so sorry to bother, I’m a friend of Q’s, is he here?”

She crosses her arms. “You’re a friend of Quentin?” she repeats, clearly not convinced. “I know all of his friends, and you’re not one of them,” she says haughtily. 

Eliot can’t help but snort. “Okay, Princess, or maybe you don’t know everything, ever thought of that?” She’s glaring daggers at him, but she stays silent. “Is he here or not?” he asks again, his patience running thin.

“He’s not here,” she answers before slamming the door in his face.

“Fuck you, too!” he shouts gleefully before running down the stairs and to Hoberman’s bar.

He thought he’d have more time to catch Q before then.

He gets to the bar, and it’s still dark and full of smoke. He looks around, but there’s too many people and he can’t spot Quentin. He walks around the bar. There’s no one at their spot at the counter, no lone figure in a booth. He tries the bathroom, but once again, no luck. He goes back to the counter, leans over it to catch the barman’s attention. He gives a description of Q, asks if he’s been here. The barman shrugs. 

Eliot runs a hand through his curls. He steps outside, tries to clear his head. Quentin should be here, shouldn’t he? Have they fucked up their recreation of his first night entirely? Maybe Quentin went to his party instead? But no, he was intent on fixing things up with Alice that last time, he wouldn’t have skipped that part again.

Eliot still calls Margo, just in case. He stays clear of the hatch—which is open because of fucking course it is.

“El? Are you coming back?”

“Sorry, Bambi, not yet. Listen, is there a guy asking about me at the party?”

“A guy?” she repeats. It sounds like she takes a sip of her drink. She smacks her lips together. “I mean, there’s Idri?”

“No, fuck Idri! I’m talking about Q! Kinda short, long hair, nervous, super nerd but cute?”

“Why don’t you just call him?”

Eliot tries not to get frustrated. “I don’t have his number.”

“He’s not here, El. Sorry. Good luck!”

He hangs up. 

Next stop: the bodega.

When he gets there, Julia is at the register, looking exhausted. 

“Hey!” he greets her, his breath short from running in the cold night.

She stares at him. “Are you okay?”

“I will be. Listen, is Q here?”

Julia frowns. “You know Q? Who are you?”

“I’m Eliot and yes I know him. Is he here? Is he okay?”

Julia winces. “Depends on how you define okay. He’s in the back room.”

He runs to the back, ignoring Julia asking him what the fuck is going on. Quentin is there, sitting on one of two uncomfortable looking chairs. 

“Hey, Q,” Eliot says.

Quentin looks up at him and his eyes are red and puffy. He frowns, staring at Eliot’s face with confusion before he talks. “Who are you?”

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stay tuned for the last chapter, coming to you tomorrow (or on wednesday depending on how ridiculous my life is tonight and tomorrow)  
> thanks for reading!


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the end, y'all!!  
> i'm beyond thrilled by how well received this fic has been, thank you so much for your support  
> many thanks also to my gf (@guenvanhelsing here on ao3) who had the kindness to betaread this, the patience to answer my many "hey babe what's the word for when you do that *specific thing* in english?" questions and supported my many breakdowns during nano.
> 
> enjoy!

Eliot sits on the other chair. “How are you?” he asks instead of answering Quentin’s question.

Quentin shrugs. “I’m a failure,” he says, slurring his words a little. Drunk, most likely.

“You’re not.”

“I am, though,” he says dejectedly, swaying on his chair. “Alice doesn’t want me anymore. I suck. Life sucks.”

Eliot grabs him by the shoulder, keeping him from toppling down the chair. “Hey, fuck Alice, okay? You can do so much better than her. And yeah, right now it sucks, but it’ll get better.”

Quentin glances up. “I don’t know you.”

“But you do. And right now, you’re wasted, so you don’t remember, but we’re friends.”

Quentin pouts. “We are?”

“Yes.”

“No.” Quentin shakes his head and Eliot has to grab his other shoulder to keep him from falling sideways. “You’re too hot to be my friend. No one that hot would wanna be my friend.”

Eliot rolls his eyes. “For fuck’s sake,” he mutters under his breath. “Q. Hey, Q. We are friends. I assure you we are. And I’m gonna take care of you, okay? You’re gonna be alright.”

Quentin shrugs off one of Eliot’s hands. “No, I’m not. Alice broke up with me! I was gonna propose!” He slumps on his chair and crosses his arms. 

“Oh, boy,” Julia says from the door.

Eliot looks up at her. “Did you know?”

Julia leans on the door frame. “That he was gonna propose? Fuck no.”

“What would you have done if you did?”

She sighs. “I’d’ve probably tried to convince him to breach the subject with Alice first.”

Next to them, Quentin starts snoring. Eliot glances at him, makes sure he’s stable on his chair before letting go of his shoulder.

“How do you know Q?” Julia asks, her voice soft. 

Eliot rubs at his face, wonders how to best answer that question. He decides to go for the truth, or a version of it anyway.

“We met in the hospital elevator. Then we kept bumping into each other from time to time.”

“He’s never mentioned you.”

Eliot huffs a laugh. “I’m a bit of an asshole.”

Julia snorts. “We should put some food into him,” she says, nodding to the sleeping Quentin.

Eliot is torn between agreeing with her and wanting to let Quentin sleep off the alcohol, sort of hoping he’ll remember him once his mind is clear. 

“You’re right,” he ends up saying. He turns back to Quentin, shakes him a little. “Q? Hey, come on wake up.”

Quentin grumbles, tries to bat his hand away. “Fuck off,” he mumbles without opening his eyes. Eliot shakes him harder. Quentin’s eyes flutter open. He squints at Eliot. “You’re not Julia,” he says.

“Indeed, I’m not.”

“I’m right here, Q,” Julia says. Quentin blinks at her and she gives him a little wave. “We’re gonna get something to eat, alright?”

Quentin pouts. Eliot tries very hard not to find him adorable. The man is drunk and sad and vulnerable. He shouldn’t be cute. 

Eliot helps Quentin to his feet and takes most of his weight when he can’t actually stay upright on his own.

“I’m very sorry if I throw up on you,” Quentin says to him, slurring his words like he did in Hoberman’s bar.

“Duly noted,” Eliot replies with a smile. 

“I shouldn’t throw up on you, you’re very pretty.” Quentin turns to Julia. “Isn’t he pretty, Jules?”

Julia stifles a laugh. “Yes, he is, Q.”

Despite the good mood, Eliot can’t help but think that Quentin, this very version of Quentin, killed himself later that night. And that can’t fucking happen. Not on Eliot’s watch.

Julia closes the bodega and they go to a small diner open all night. Julia orders a stack of pancakes for Quentin and, after a nod from Eliot, coffee for all of them. 

“Can I ask you something?” she asks while they wait. Quentin is sitting next to her, leaning against the wall, looking like he fell asleep once again.

“Go ahead,” Eliot says, hoping his voice doesn’t betray his nervousness. There’s only so many truths he can tell before she thinks he has truly lost it. He takes a sip from his coffee. It’s frankly terrible, but at this point, it doesn’t matter all that much.

“I don’t want Q to be alone tonight,” she starts, fiddling with the sugar packet in front of her. “I don’t know how much you know about him, how much he told you, but that breakup could make him spiral downward. Hard.”

Eliot nods. “I know that,” he says, glancing at Q, who’s definitely asleep by now. “What are you asking?”

“Usually I’d stay with him the entire night, but—”

“I’ll stay,” Eliot cuts, not waiting to hear why she can’t. He’ll take anything if it allows him to keep an eye on him.

Julia looks relieved but like guilt is creeping up on her. “You will? I know it’s a lot to ask I—”

“Julia,” he interrupts again. “I’ll do it.” He sees the waitress coming their way with Q’s pancakes. “Now it’s your turn to wake him up.”

-

They walk together to Quentin’s building, Eliot once again taking most of his weight. Julia unlocks the door, holds it open for them. They laboriously make their way up to Quentin’s floor. 

In the apartment, they’re greeted by a rabbit.

“Hey, Jane,” Quentin mutters when he sees it—her? “You’re still here.”

Eliot sits Quentin on the couch, trying not to remember that vivid memory of them heavily making out there. 

“Give me your phone,” Julia says behind him. He holds it out wordlessly and she punches in her number. “Call me if anything happens.”

“I will.”

She puts a set of keys on the kitchen counter. “His keys.”

He nods. She looks around the apartment, eyes fleeting here and there, stopping on Quentin—who’s now laid down on the entire length of the couch—for a few seconds before moving on, like she’s looking for something to do, something to say so she won’t feel useless. She looks pretty miserable.

“Julia,” Eliot says. “We’ll be fine. I promise. I’m gonna put him in bed and in the morning he’ll hate everything but then I’ll make him my secret hangover cure and he’ll hate everything less.”

She pushes a hand through her hair. “Okay. Okay, I’m going then.”

Eliot walks her to the door. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll call you,” he says in what he hopes is a reassuring tone. 

She gives him a tense smile. “Thank you, Eliot.”

He gives her shoulder a little squeeze. “We’ll see you in the morning.”

She nods, and with one last glance back at Quentin, she’s gone. Eliot locks the door behind her and turns to the couch. He sits on the coffee table.

“Q?” he calls softly. A grumble answers him. “Don’t you think you’d be more comfortable in your bed?”

“Are you gonna tuck me in?” Quentin mumbles with his eyes half open.

Eliot chuckles. “Sure.”

“Okay, then.”

They wobble to the bedroom. Quentin flops down on the bed, not even trying to sit and remove his shoes or follow any other civilised course of action. Eliot rolls his eyes.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” he sighs.

“Y’think I’m cute?” Quentin says into his pillow.

“You know I do,” Eliot answers. He sits down on the bed and removes Quentin’s shoes for him.

Quentin turns his head towards him. “Are you staying?” he asks.

“Yes, Q, I am.”

Quentin wriggles until he’s on his back. “Why are you being nice to me?” He looks wide awake now. Eliot resists the urge to sigh again. Drunk people are like toddlers. Sleeping on their feet one second and ready to go take over a karaoke bar the next.

“You’re my friend,” Eliot says. “Even if right now, you don’t remember.”

Quentin frowns and pouts. “I don’t think I’m gonna fall asleep,” he says, matter-of-factly.

Eliot huffs a laugh. “Do you want me to tell you a story?”

Quentin’s smile is so bright and sincere, Eliot feels blinded by it. “I love stories,” Quentin says.

Eliot settles on the other side of the bed, reclining against the headboard. “Alright then. Do you know the story of the lost boy and the boy with a death wish stuck in the loop?” Quentin shakes his head. Eliot clears his throat. “Once upon a time, there was a very special boy named Q.” Quentin closes his eyes, still smiling. “And this boy was brave and selfless and full of love, but one day, life got too much for him and he started feeling lost. But that day, he also met a boy that looked as if a rock star from the seventies had a baby with the thief from _Tangled_.”

Quentin chuckles sleepily. “I love _Tangled_.”

“I’m sure you do,” Eliot says softly. “That boy, he helped Q, but he wasn’t in such hot shape either.” Quentin frowns a little, but his breathing evens out slowly. “You see, life was too painful.” Eliot slides down a bit, until he’s more lying than sitting. “They kept going through loops, reliving the same night over and over again. They couldn’t stop it. But then one night, something miraculous happened.” He yawns, then looks down at Q and finds him deeply asleep, snoring lightly, his frown gone. “They made it through alive,” Eliot says, fighting the fatigue creeping up on him. His next words are almost a whisper. “Both of them.”

-

Eliot wakes up to an empty bed. It’s still dark outside and fear spikes in him. 

“Quentin?” he calls. “Q?” There’s no answer from the apartment. “Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit!”

He runs out of the apartment, runs up the stairs and rushes to the roof. The door leading through it is open. He hears police sirens coming up from the city, the rush of the wind.

“Q?” he calls once outside. The wind is strong up here, and without his coat, only wearing his shirt and waistcoat, he’s freezing, he knows he is, but his focus isn’t on that at the moment.

There’s no one on the roof. No one but him.

“Fuck. Fuck, you stupid fucking fuck!” he swears, feeling tears starting to burn his eyes. He’s too late. He fell asleep and he’s too fucking late and Q is fucking gone.

He cries softly, standing on the edge of that roof, while the city keeps on going under him.

“What’s wrong?” says a flat voice next to him.

Eliot turns sharply to his right. Quentin is standing there, barefoot, utterly expressionless, staring at the city lights.

“I’m so fucking happy you didn’t jump.”

“If I don’t jump, I’ll be happy?” Quentin asks, in that same flat and empty voice, still not looking at him.

Eliot hates it. He swallows around the knot in his throat. “I have no fucking idea,” he says. “But I can promise you that you won’t be alone.”

Quentin glances at him. Once. Twice. Then he turns fully away from the ledge. “Okay. What now?”

“Now we get the fuck out of this roof before you change your fucking mind.”

They get into the elevator in silence and Eliot smashes their floor button, his hands still shaking, while Quentin passes him, leans against the far wall. Eliot sighs. It’s over. It should be over. 

Back in the apartment, Quentin sits down on the couch. Eliot would tell him to go back to bed, only he himself is too amped up to sleep. He slips behind the kitchen counter and starts making hot chocolate. 

When he turns back to Quentin to check on him, he finds him already staring back, frowning, his mouth slightly open, as if confused.

“Q?” Eliot says.

“What—what happened to coffee?” Quentin says, slowly, hesitantly, like he’s not sure the words belong in his mouth, like he’s reciting from memory.

Eliot’s chest squeezes. He swallows thickly, remembering the loop that question came from vividly. It’s the first time Quentin kissed him. 

He brings the mugs to the couch, Quentin’s eyes never leaving him. 

“Do you know who I am,” he asks carefully, sitting down next to Quentin, who frowns.

“You’re—you’re Eliot.”

Eliot puts down the mugs on the coffee table, then turns to face Quentin, who looks more confused with every second passing. “I am,” he confirms, trying to stay as calm as possible.

Quentin looks at him, then down at his hands. He pushes his hair back, glances up at Eliot, eyebrows knitted together, looks away again. “I—I died,” he breathes. He rubs his face, leans over, his elbows on his knees, his hands joined over the bottom half of his face. “Fuck,” he says, more a whisper than anything. His eyes wander over the room, before stopping on Eliot once more. “You were there. It’s—it’s your birthday. But—but how? How are you here? We—we died and—”

Quentin stops. All the tension in his body leaves, and he falls back against the back of a couch, like a puppet whose threads have been cut. 

“It’s another loop, isn't it?” he asks softly, defeated. 

Eliot slides closer to him. “It’s not. Q. I promise you, it’s not. This is real. We’re back. Look, even your rabbit is back.”

Quentin looks sad and so, so, tired. “We’re back?” he repeats, something in his voice like hope, but hope you don’t want to believe in. Eliot nods. Quentin chuckles. “I was an ass to you, that last time,” he says.

Eliot snorts. “I was pretty bad myself.”

Quentin smiles, and takes his hand, interlacing their fingers. “You were.”

Eliot stares at their hands. He clears his throat. “Does that mean you remember now?” he asks and he tries to sound detached, but he’s pretty sure Quentin can hear his heart beating from where he’s sitting. He wets his lips. 

Quentin follows the movement with his eyes and nods, leans in ever so slightly. “Can I—”

“ _Yes_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can find me on [tumblr](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/190795838042/tuntematonkorppi-before-the-morning-comes-a)


End file.
